1J4 CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



employed in baths^ but inhalation of its steam into the throat and 

 lungs is considered wonderfully curative in cases of incipient con- 

 sumption. Dr. G. adds an ample catalogue of formidable maladies 

 in the treatment of which he is confident the Gastein baths, judi- 

 ciously and sufficiently used, will not disappoint the patient. With 

 a view to unriddle the mystery of thermality in mineral waters, he 

 risks a repetition of the ancient conjecture, that the heat developed 

 ill liot springs is of volcanic origin. 



Hof-Gastein possesses no mineral springs of its own ; it receives 

 its thermal water from Gastein in wooden pipes, which retain more 

 heat in the passing fluid than is required for the purpose of bathing. 

 The former is a considerable village in a plain, within sight of the 

 latter place, where want of room for visitors gave rise to the reputa- 

 tion of this as a watering-place. Many people, after trying the 

 mountain air at the fountain-head, come down to Hof-Gastein for a 

 change of climate, and find the baths here equally efficacious. 



Dr. Granville finishes the description of his " second geographical 

 group" with an account of adventures, observations, and reflections, 

 as they occurred on his journey to the Bohemian Spas, and on ex- 

 cursions into vai'ious parts of the intervening country, including his 

 visit to the salt-mines at Hallein, and its dark subterranean lake of 

 brine. When exploring the cavern of a thermal spring at Gastein, 

 he collected some of the schlegm or slime which adheres to the rocks 

 around the source itself, where no day-light penetrates ; he culled 

 some specimens, also, of the slender stalactitious depositions which 

 hang from the same rocks, and some of the green, grassy, slippery 

 conferva Ihermalis, found at the bottom of the channel in which the 

 hot water flows. On his return to Saltzburg he presented these cu- 

 riosities to Dr. Werneck, for examination with his microscopes, one 

 of which is said to possess extraordinary power and distinctness. 

 The schlegm is a loose, fungoid, ropy deposit, formed in the dark 

 recesses of the hot springs, where no sun-light ever enters. Its co- 

 lour is sometimes white, sometimes brown ; it is not of animal ori- 

 gin, but of a vegetable and cryptogamic nature. When a minute 

 portion of it is diluted on the object-glass, it exhibits several pear- 

 shaped capsules, standing in groups upon a " slimy, felty pericarp, 

 formed of succional vessels," which are the real receptacles of the 

 seed. The thermal conferva is never found in hot mineral waters 

 where light has no access : it vegetates on the bottom of rills outside 

 the caverns, and in open reservoirs, wherever rough bodies or ob- 

 stacles to the water's course enable it to attach itself. This con- 

 ferve might be compared to a green silk plush, the hair of which 

 has been pressed anu smoothed down in one uniform direction. Two 

 classes of beings endowed with motion, and of striking and many- 

 varied forms, are distinguishable, in the smallest piece of this sub- 

 stance, by the microscope. Some of these are vegetable, others ani- 

 mal, infusorial animalcules : the latter find food and nest in the for- 

 mer, which alone gives its green colour to the conferval production. 

 While under observation, some of them were seen oscillating from 



