364 TRAVELS IN THE EAST INDIAN ARCHU'ELAGO. 



diameter. Tlie water does not boil up except in oiie 

 or two places, and almost tlie only gas that escapes is 

 steam. Its temperature is 78° Celsius, 172.4° Faliren- 

 lieit. On one side is a small brook wliich carries off 

 the surplus water, for this is truly a spring, that is, 

 a place where water flows up from the ground. A 

 short distance to the west and north are a number 

 of hills, from which this water no doubt comes. As 

 stifling gases were not pouring out, I had a better 

 opportunity for examining the banks of the brook, 

 which flowed off sixty feet, and was then conducted 

 across the road by a causeway. Tracing it with the 

 current several times, I invariably came to the first 

 indication of vegetable life in the same place. It 

 was a small quantity of algae on the bottom of the 

 brook, each plant being about as large round as a 

 pin, and an eighth of an inch in length, and re- 

 sembling the Vauclieria, or brook silk, the green 

 threads of which are seen in the fresh-water ponds 

 by our roadsides in summer. Here the temperature 

 was 76f ° Celsius, 170.15° Fahrenheit. As the water 

 flowed out through this shallow brook, a large part 

 of all the sulphurous gas it contained of course 

 passed off, and I believe the vegetation began at that 

 point, not so much because the water was 1:^° Celsius 

 cooler than in the basin, as because it was much 

 purer, for at a short distance nearer the basin, where 

 the temperature was 77|-° Celsius, 172.82° Fahren- 

 heit, no kind of vegetation could be detected, and 

 yet the difference in the temperature of the water in 

 the two places was only three-eighths of a degree in 

 Celsius's scale. 



