In a short time it became perfectly limpid, and on breaking it up I could discover no signs of prism.

On some parts of the floor of the glaciere, the ice was apparently unprismatic, generally in connection with running water or other marks of thaw; but, to my surprise, I found that it split into prisms very readily.
The maire could not understand how it was that, after a winter especially severe, as that of 1863-4 had been, there should be even less ice than in the preceding summer, and we could see the marks of last year's cutting, down to the edge of the _moulin_.

He said that they had never before cut down in that direction; but in the summer of 1863 they had been so much struck by the clearness of the ice which formed the floor, that they had cut it freely, and removed a large quantity.

This, I believe, was the cause of the absence of any great amount of fresh ice.

The slope of the whole ice-floor is considerable, and the workmen increased the slope by cutting away the ice in the neighbourhood of the edge of the _moulin_: they had also, as we could see quite plainly, excavated the clearer parts of the ice between the entrance to the cave and the _moulin_, so that a sort of trough ran down from near the foot of the snow to the pit at the lower end of the glaciere.