and Spouting Fuuntains. 221 



an overflowing of the subterranean lake, which advances, du- 

 ring many hours, so as to cover with its waters the land which 

 lies over it. 



Very singular peculiarities have been remarked as belonging 

 to these different openings in the earth : some of them supply 

 nothing but water; others supply a passage both to water and 

 to fishes of a greater and smaller size ; and there is a third class 

 by which ducks are supplied from the subterranean lake*. 



These ducks, at the moment that the water floats them to the 

 surface above ground, swim with perfect facility. They are 

 completely blind, and almost naked. The faculty of sight, how- 

 ever, is very speedily acquired ; but it is not till after two or 

 three weeks that their feathers, which are black, except in the 

 head, are so grown as to allow them to fly. Valvasor visited the 

 lake in 1687. He himself caught a great number of these 

 ducks ; and saw the peasants catch individuals of the Mustela 

 fluvlatilis, which weighed two or three pounds, tench of from 

 six to seven pounds, and, finally, pike from twenty to thirty, 

 and even to forty pounds weight. Here, then, it will be per- 

 ceived, that we have not only an immense subterranean sheet 



• These differences in the products, if the word may be allowed, of the dif 

 ferent openings of Lake Zirknitz, are not of such difficult explanation as 

 might at first appear. A pipe, or hollow canal in the earth, the inferior open- 

 ing of which descends below the surface of a subterranean lake, cannot, at 

 the time of the sinking of the level, transmit any thing through it which is 

 more elevated than that opening. As ducks swim at the surface of the water, all 

 exit by this descending canal is shut against them. If, on the contrary, the 

 lower end of the tube opens at day, that is to say above the surface of the 

 lake, it appears quite plain that the subterranean ducks will seek refuge there 

 when the surface of the water is rising, and it may ere long force them up 

 through it. Again, we can explain why certain openings never furnish any 

 fish, by observing, that a canal may be very large above, and may terminate 

 at the other extremity by small openings and narrow fissures. 



In the journey which Mr John Russe made in Germany in 1820-21-22, 

 he does not mention ducks amongst the living creatures which the lower 

 lake of Zirknitz brought to light by its overflowing. Hence I was disposed 

 to conclude, that these inhabitants of the subterranean world had been en- 

 tirely destroyed since the time of Valvasor in 1687; but M. Landresse has 

 put an Itinerary by G. Agapito, into my hand, in Italian, printed ten years 

 ago at Vienna, in which the lake is still represented as riguryitando delle anitre 

 tenza piume e cieche, as presenting ducks witliout feathers, and blind. It is in 

 these subterranean waters of Carniola, that' the Proteus anguinus h' found, an 

 animal which has to so great a degree excited the attention of naturalists. 

 VOL. XVIII. NO. XXXVI. APKII. 1835. ft 



