Intermitting Brine Springs of Kissingen. 141 



stand right, the spring is not, properly speaking, intermittent, but it 

 may easily be rendered so by a singular artifice which I saw put in 

 practice. When the workmen wish to stop the flow of water, in 

 order to proceed with the boring, they surround the rods with a plug 

 of clay bandaged with cloth, so that by lowering it into the bore- 

 hole, which contracts at a certain depth, they stop it as when one 

 corks a phial. In an instant all is still, the turmoil of water foam- 

 ing with gas is at an end ; and this tranquillity lasts for many days, 

 and when the spring again rises, it may be stopped out in a similar 

 way. Inspector Knorr thinks that he has established a kind of law 

 in these remissions to this effect, that the number of days which 

 elapse before the spontaneous return of the spring is thrice the 

 number during which it had before flowed. Thus, if the spring has 

 been allowed to rise uninterruptedly for five days, and is then 

 stopped, it will remain fifteen days out. 



Under ordinary circumstances, the gas and water exhaust their 

 projectile force in a cauldron or shaft of considerable depth and 

 width, in which the Artesian bore terminates ; but Mr Knorr gave 

 us an opportunity of witnessing its ascensional power, by fitting a 

 tube into the entrance of the bore, thus leading it up to the surface 

 of the ground; it then spouted from that level to a height of at least 

 50 feet in the free air, having at its emission a diameter equal to 

 that of a man's thigh. When we consider that it has first to rise 

 1240 feet through the earth, and that it is impelled by a mysterious 

 and unseen, but apparently exhaustless, power beneath, and with this 

 astonishing force, the phenomenon is certainly very surprising. 



I shall only add the temperatures of some remarkable springs, 

 taken in 1850 with great care, and which are the very same with 

 those observed by me twelve years previous, the results of which may 

 be found in my former paper. 



Schonborn Quelle (Saline) 93 cubic feet per minute. 



