Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/287

Rh finding crevices in the rock from which he took chunks of ice weighing twenty and twenty-five pounds. Nothing more was done to bring this mine to the notice of the public and consequently it is known to but very few people even in Coudersport.

Although the Sweden Valley Ice Mine was discovered in 1898, it is practically unknown to-day. It is astonishing how many people within a few miles have never visited it nor heard of it. Recent inquiry (March, 1912) at the United States Geological Survey, Washington, brought forth the following response:

There are in northern Pennsylvania, on the high plateau, several localities where, during the winter, snow and ice accumulate in large quantities under the protection of cliffs and caves, so that ice is obtainable from these sources during the succeeding warm season, but the Geological Survey has no knowledge of any ice mine in which ice is actually forming during the warm season.

The reason the U. S. Geological Survey has no record of these phenomena is that their survey in Potter County has never been completed and no atlas of the county has ever been published.

Further inquiry brought the following reply: