306 Professor Forbes's Account of 



nate precipitancy with which some experimenters hasten to dig- 

 nify as general laws, the consequences which result from their 

 first experiments. Sometimes, we have only to take up an in- 

 strument and use it in some research, in order to stumble upon 

 some new fact. But in prosecuting the work with becoming assi- 

 duity, in varying our modes of experimenting, and in analyzing 

 the phenomena in different aspects, it will most generally be 

 found, either that the novelty is only apparent, and that the 

 true explanation may be found among the already established 

 truths of science ; or if, on the other hand, it turns out to be a 

 real discovery, it will almost invariably contradict those alleged 

 general laws which first of all presented themselves to our 

 minds with so much apparent certainty and clearness. (Comptes 

 Rendus de I'' Academic des Sciences.) 



Account of an Intermitting' Brine Spring discharging Carbonic 

 Acid GaSf near Kissingen in Bavaria. By Professor 

 FoKBEs. (Communicated by the Author.)*^ 



The little town of Kissingen in Bavaria is situated in 49° 

 50' North Lat. and 9,T 35' E. from Ferro, or 9° 50' from 

 Greenwich, at an elevation of about 640 feet above the sea. 

 It is seated on the left bank of the river Saal, which flows 

 directly from the mountainous district of the Rhon. It is from 

 30 to 40 English miles north of Wiirtzburg, and 60 or 70 

 miles due east of Frankfort-on-the-Maine, from which it is se- 

 parated by the woody and rugged district of the Spessart. 

 The Kreutzberg, the highest of the Rhongebirge, rises to a 

 height of 3000 feet, at a distance of 15 or 20 miles, and the 

 immediate neighbourhood is varied by a continued succession 

 of hills and valleys, without being actually mountainous. 



Insignificant as, until within a very few years, the town or 

 rather village of Kissingen has been, it appears to have enjoyed 

 a certain celebrity from remote times, first on account of its 

 salt- springs, and afterwards from the curative properties of its 

 mineral waters. We shall not discuss the knotty point whether 



♦ Read to the Royal Society, Edinburgh, 7th January 1839. 



