Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/288

284 We find that phenomena similar to that described by you are not unknown and have been discussed in numerous papers. One of the best of these is the article on the Decorah Ice Cave and its explanation by Mr. Alois F. Kovarik, Scientific American Supplement, November 26, 1898, pp. 19158 and 19159. Dr. Samuel Calvin in his geology of Winneshiek County, Iowa (Iowa Geological

Survey, Vol. 16, 1905, pp. 142 to 146), describes this phenomenon and quotes at length from Mr. Kovarik 's article, with approval. See also "Glaciers and Freezing Caverns," by Edwin Swift Balch, Philadelphia, 1900, pp. 88, 89, 177, 136 to 161; also "Ice Caves and Frozen Wells as Meteorological Phenomena," by H. H. Kimball, Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 29, pp. 366 and 509, 1901.

The writer looked through these references hastily and from Balch's "Glacieres or Freezing Caverns" the following is taken:

The natives and peasants in the neighborhood of Glacière caves generally believe that the ice of caves is formed in summer and melts in winter. I have met with this belief everywhere in Europe; in the Eifel, Jura, Swiss Alps,