It is so impossible to accept in full the accounts one picks up of natural curiosities, that I give the maire's description of the stray glacière only for what it is worth. It was not extracted without much laborious cross-examination--_sais paw vous le dire_ being the average answer to my questions. The entrance to the cave is about twice as high as a man, and is in a small shallow basin of rock and grass. The floor is level with the entrance, and the roof rises inside to a good height. In shape it is like a Continental bread-oven; and at the time of the maire's visit, the floor was a confused mass of ice and stones, the former commencing at the very entrance. There was no ice except on the floor, the area of which might be as large as that of the surface of the ice in the Glacière of Grand Anu. No pit was to be seen, and not a drop of water. Snow could have drifted in easily, but they saw no signs of any remaining. If this account be true, especially with respect to the position of the entrance and the horizontal direction of the floor, I have seen no glacière like it. We descended for a time through fir-woods, and then again down steep and barren rocks, till we reached the sharp slope of grass which so frequently connects the base of a mountain with the more civilised forests and the pasturages below. The maire led us for some distance along the top of this grass slope, towards the west, skirting the rocks till they became precipitous and lofty, when he said we must be near our point. Still we went on and on without seeing any signs of it, and our guide seemed in despair; and I, for one, entirely gave up the third cave to the same fate as the second, and became very sulky and remonstrative. The entrance to the glacière, the maire told us, was a hole in the face of the highest rocks, 3 or 4 yards only above the grass; and as we had now reached a part of the mountain where the rock springs up smooth and high, and we could command the whole face, and yet saw nothing, the schoolmaster came over to my side, and told the maire he was a humbug. However, we were then within a few yards of the desired spot, and half-a-dozen steps showed us a small _cheminée_, down which a strong and icy current of wind blew. The maire shouted a shout of triumph, and climbed the _cheminée_; and when we also had done the necessary gymnastics, we found a hole facing almost due north, all within being dark. The current blew so determinedly, that matches were of no use, and I was obliged to seek a sheltered corner before I could light a candle; and, when lighted, the candle was with difficulty kept from being blown out. No ice was visible, nor any signs of such a thing,--nothing but a very irregular narrow cave, with darkness at the farther end. As we advanced, we found that the floor of the cave came to a sudden end, and the darkness developed into a strange narrow fissure, which reached out of sight upwards, and out of sight below; and down