Lednica of Szilize. (M. Bel, _Philosophical Transactions_, London, 1739, vol. XLI., page 41 _et seq._; Townson, _Travels in Hungary_, 1797; Terlanday, _Petermann's Mittheilungen_, 1893, page 283.)--It lies 1.5 kilometers from the village of Szilize, near Rosenau, in Gomör County, in the Carpathians, at an altitude of 460 meters. A pit about 35 meters deep, 75 meters long, and 48 meters wide opens in the ground, and at the southern end, in the perpendicular wall, is the cave. The entrance is 22 meters wide, 15 meters high, and faces north. A slope 4 meters long sinks with an angle of 35° to the floor of the cave, which is nearly circular in form, with a diameter of about 10 meters. On the east side of the cave there seems to be a hole in the ice some 10 meters deep. In 1739, there was published in London a curious letter in Latin from Matthias Bel, a Hungarian _savant_, about the cavern of Szilize. He says: "The nature of the cave has this of remarkable, that, when outside the winter freezes strongest, inside the air is balmy: but it is cold, even icy, when the sun shines warmest. As soon as the snow melts and spring begins, the inner roof of the cave, where the midday sun strikes the outside, begins to sweat clear water, which drops down here and there; through the power of the inner cold it turns to transparent ice and forms icicles, which in thickness equal large barrels and take wonderful shapes. What as water drops from the icicles to the sandy floor, freezes up, even quicker, than one would think.