SPRINGS. 



277 



springs, celebrated in a still extant inscription : " Hail golden city Hierapolis ! the spot 

 to be preferred before any in wide Asia, revered for the rills of the nymphs, adorned with 

 splendour !" The ancients speak of the transforming power of the waters, and relate that 

 being conducted about the vineyards and gardens, the channels became long fences, each 

 a single stone. There is now a powerful hot spring feeding numerous rills, and a calca 

 reous cliff, an entire deposition from it. The occurrence of petrifactions, which puzzled 

 science a century ago, and which rustic ignorance accepted as instances of the real trans 

 mutation of different objects into stones, is now well known to arise from the deposition 

 upon them of the earthy ingredients of the waters to which they are exposed, investing 

 them with a calcareous or siliceous crust. The Dripping Well at Knaresborough, on the 



banks of the Nidd, often visit 

 ed on account of its inviting 

 scenery, and the cave of 

 Eugene Aram in the neigh 

 bourhood, is a curious petrify 

 ing spring ; and at the Mat- 

 lock Wells the process of pe- 

 trification is shown, objects 

 which are put into them be 

 coming soon encrusted with 

 the limestone precipitated from 

 the water as it evaporates. A 

 considerable number of springs 

 have recently been found to 

 contain iodine or bromine. 

 Those which issue from the 

 lias at Leamington, Gloucester, 

 Tewkesbury, and Cheltenham, 

 contain iodine. The saline 

 aperient waters of Epsom con 

 tain a small quantity of bro 

 mine, which is also found in 

 the springs from the coal for 

 mation of Asliby-de-la-Zouch, 

 Newcastle, and Kingswood. 

 In several European springs, 

 a remarkable animal substance 

 has been detected, termed glairine, which may be derived from strata containing animal 

 fossil remains, through which the water percolates. 



Such are the chief peculiarities of the subject of this chapter. No apology need be 

 offered for devoting so much space to it ; for, however incompetent to explain all the phe 

 nomena, there can be no difference of opinion as to the high interest and practical utility 

 of the phenomena themselves. The springs are the sources of the rivers which fertilise 

 the soil through which they flow, and form the navigable channels which offer nations a 

 convenient medium of intercommunication. To the geologist, they speak in the language 

 of comment respecting the interior constitution of the globe, by their occasional high 

 temperature and mineral composition, and the mode in which many of its strata have been 

 produced, by the solid products in course of formation from their waters. The medicinal 

 virtue of their streams is also a beneficial item of no mean importance ; and whether 

 welling through the loose sand and stony pavement of the Arabian desert, or breaking 



Dripping Well, Knaresborough. 



