18 Mr. Bakewell on the Thermal Waters of the Alps. 



the warm saline springs at Moutiers ceased to flow for forty- 

 eight hours. When the water returned, the quantity was 

 said to be increased, and the saline impregnation was weaker. 

 Former and more formidable agitations of the earth are re- 

 corded in the Haut Valais, particularly in the district where 

 the principal hot springs are situated. The last earthquake of 

 consequence in the Valais took place in January 1 803. 



I am informed that several of the retired valleys on the 

 Italian side of the Alps, at the foot of the central chain, are 

 subject to earthquakes, during which the ground has opened 

 or sunk down in various parts, though these effects have been 

 too local to excite attention at a distance. From these facts 

 it seems as reasonable to infer that the thermal waters of the 

 Alps owe their high temperature to subterranean fire, as that 

 the hot springs in countries that have formerly been volcanic, 

 derive their warmth from an internal unextinguished, but 

 quiescent source of heat. No person who has attentively ex- 

 amined the lofty granitic plain to the west of Clermont Fer- 

 rand in France, and observed the granite in various parts 

 pierced through by ancient volcanos that have poured cur- 

 rents of lava over its surface, or seen other parts where the 

 granite itself has been changed by its contiguity to subter- 

 ranean fire, or upheaved and intermixed with volcanic rocks ; — 

 no one, I say, who has observed this, can doubt that the hot 

 springs of Mont Dor and Vichy derive their high tempera- 

 ture from a source of heat situated beneath the granite moun- 

 tains, though ages have passed away since the volcanos of that 

 country have been in an active state : and the only proof of 

 the present existence of subterranean fire in Auvergne, is to 

 be found in the hot springs themselves*. Nor can any ade- 

 quate reason be assigned for attributing the high temperature 

 of the thermal waters in the Alps, to any other cause than to a 

 source of subterranean fire under these mountains, — a cause 

 which is sufficient also to have produced their original eleva- 

 tion. It is however proper to state, that in some of the moun- 



* I visited the extinct volcanos of Auvergne in the spring of 1822; and 

 in 1823 I published an account of my observations in the second volume 

 of my Travels, accompanied with cuts, and a section and outline of the 

 country near Clermont, which, as far as I know, was the first attempt to 

 render in this manner the structure of this volcanic district intelligible to 

 the general reader. I discovered the bones of large mammalia in the fresh- 

 water limestone under the volcanic tufa of Mount Gergovia, — a fact at that 

 time unknown to Messrs. Brongniart, Cordier, and Brochant, to whom I 

 mentioned it on my return through Paris. I was therefore surprised to 

 see it intimated in the Quarterly Review for October 1827, that Dr. 

 Daubeny and Mr. Scrope were the only Englishmen who had given an 

 account of the extinct volcanoes in France. 



tains 



