GEYSERS. ord 
and the vent becomes either a tranquil lawg or wholiy extinct, while 
the pearly geyserite forming its cone disintegrates and crumbles into 
fine Shaly débris, resembling comminuted oyster shells. Thus there is 
a slow but continual change in progress at the geyser basins, in which 
old springs become extinct and new ones come into being and activity. 
With few exceptions, where the vents are very new, geysers spout 
from basins or from cones of white siliceous sinter, or geyserite, depos- 
ited about the vent by the hot waters. Such deposits are formed very 
slowly, one-twentieth of an inch a year being an average rate of growth 
for the deposit formed by evaporation alone. These deposits of sinter 
are therefore an index to the age of the geyser. In many cases these 
sinter cones are very odd, fantastic structures of great beauty while wet 
by the the geyser spray, but becoming white, opaque, and chalk-like 
upon drying. Where the spattered drops fall in a fine spray the 
deposit is pearly, and the surface very finely spicular. Ifthe spray be 
coarse the rods are stouter and capped by pearly heads of lustrous 
brilliancy. Thus the cone is not only a measure of a geyser’s age and 
activity, but it tells, in a way, the nature of the eruption, 
Artificial production of geyser eruptions.—Eruptions of Strokr have, 
for many years, been provoked by artificial means. The funnel-shaped 
geyser throat makes it an easy matter to plug it with a barrowful of 
turf cut in the adjacent marsh. This acts as a cover, confining the 
steam, which finally overcomes the resistance and produces an erup- 
tion. ‘Travellers have also attempted to hasten the eruptions of geysers 
by throwing blocks of sinter down the tube, but it is evident that such 
measures can only succeed when the forces of heat and pressure are in 
a very delicate equilibrium. 
In the Yellowstone geyser basins it has been found that geyser erup- 
tions may be hastened or even caused in simply boiling springs by the 
use of soap or of lye. The discovery of this extraordinary fact was 
made in a very curious way. A Chinaman was engaged by the hotel 
company to wash the soiled linen; thinking to utilize the abundance of 
hot water provided by nature, arude canvas building was put up over a 
small, cireular, boiling spring near the edge of the Firehole River. In 
this spring the partly cleansed and soaped clothes were put to boil, 
suspended ina wicker-basket. All went well until the Chinaman left his 
bar of soap with the clothes, when the spring suddenly threw out. bas- 
ket, clothes, and hot water, wrecking the shanty and starting the 
Chinaman on a run from a place that was too near the infernal regions 
for comfort. This eruption, and the observed effect of soap in increas- 
ing the ebullition of boiling springs, led to the use of soap to produce 
eruptions of this boiling but not spouting spring, thenceforth known 
as the Chinaman. 
The suecess attending the use of soap in this instance suggested to 
a photographer, F. Jay Haynes, the use of soap, or its equivalent, lye, 
to hasten eruptions of those geysers of which he desired to obtain 
H, Mis, 354, pt. 1 12 
