456 SUBTEERAISrEAN WATEES. 



Some of this liumidity is exhaled again by the soil, some is taken 

 up by organic growths and by inorganic compomids, some pom-ed 

 out upon the surface by springs and either immediately evapo- 

 rated or carried down to larger streams and to the sea, some flows 

 by subterranean courses into the bed of fresh-water rivers * or of 



coast, but the phenomenon has excited little attention until very recently. In 

 1833, three of the entrances were closed, and a regular channel, sixteen feet 

 long and three feet wide, with a fall of three feet, was cut into the mouth of 

 a larger cavity. The sea-water flowed into this canal, and could be followed 

 eighteen or twenty feet beyond its inner terminus, when it disappeared in 

 holes and clefts in the rock. 



In 1858 the canal had been enlarged to the width of five feet and a half, 

 and a depth of a foot. The water pours rapidly through the canal into an 

 irregular depression and forms a pool, the surface of which is three or four 

 feet below the adjacent soil, and about two and a half or three feet below the 

 level of the sea. From this pool it escapes through several holes and clefts in 

 the rock, and has not yet been found to emerge elsewhere. 



There is a tide at Argostoli of about six inches in still weather, but it is 

 considerably higher with a south wind. I do not find it stated whether water 

 flows through the canal into the cavity at low tide, but it distinctly appears 

 that there is no refluent current, as of course there could not be from a basin 

 so much below the sea. Mousson found the delivery through the canal to be 

 at the rate of 24.88 cubic feet to the second ; at what stage of the tide does 

 not appear. Other mills of the same sort have been erected, and there appear 

 to be several points on the coast where the sea flows into the land. 



Various hypotheses have been suggested to explain this phenomenon, some 

 of which assume that the water descends to a great depth beneath the crust 

 of the earth ; but the supposition of a difference of level in the surface of the 

 sea on the opposite sides of the island, which seems confirmed by other cir- 

 cumstances, is the most obvious method of explaining these singular facts. 

 If we suppose the level of the water on one side of the island to be raised by 

 the action of currents three or four feet higher than on the other, the exist- 

 ence of cavities and channels in the rock would easily account for a subter- 

 ranean current beneath the island, and the apertures of escape might be so 

 deep or so small as to elude observation. See Aus der Natur, vol. xix., pp. 

 139, et seq. I have lately been informed by a resident of the Ionian Islands, 

 who is familiar with the locality, that the sea flows uninterruptedly into the 

 sub-insular cavities, at all stages of the tide. 



* " The affluents received by the Seine below Rouen are so inconsiderable, 

 that the augmentation of the volume of that river must be ascribed principally 

 to springs rising in its bed. This is a point of which engineers now take 

 notice, and M. Belgrand, the able officer charged with the improvement of 

 the navigation of the Seine between Paris and Rouen, has devoted much 

 attention to it." — Babinet, Etudes et Lectures, iii., p. 185. 



On page 232 of the volume just quoted, the same author observes : " In 

 the lower part of its course, from the falls of the Oise, the Seine receives so 



