CATARACTS, AND INUNDATIONS. 103 



surface, and consequently can bring with it no ducks, but only fish. 

 Those pits which yield only water may well be supposed to be fed 

 by passages too narrow to let the fish pass, though their multitude 

 may make the quantity of water they emit to be very considerable. 



The manner of the falling away of the water or emptying of the 

 lake I thus explain : After a long drought, or want of rain, all the 

 springs that feed the upper lake under Javornik are much diminish* 

 ed: so that wanting fresh supplies it ceases to run over by the 

 several channels ; hence the lake of Zirknitz, and that under it are 

 fed only by the eight rivulets that always fall into them ; and then 

 the water draws off faster than it comes in, both by the channels of 

 Mala and Velkakarlouza, as also by a concealed subterraneous 

 passage out of the under lake, which latter alone is able to transmit 

 more water than the said eight rivulets afford. Consequently the 

 lake must sink, and that in a certain proportion of time, depending 

 on the quantity of water to be evacuated, compared with the excess 

 of that which runs out above what enters it, in the same time. 

 Those pits that are higher are soonest dry, the lower latest, and so 

 come to be emptied in the order above described. And when the 

 lake is all dry, then the said rivulets soak by several very little 

 holes in the bottom into the under lake, and all their water is car- 

 ried away by the subterraneous passage. 



The ducks so often mentioned, and which are cast out with the 

 water, are generated in the lake under the mountain Javornik ; when 

 they first come out, they swim well, but are stark blind, and have 

 iio feathers on them, or but few, and therefore are easily caught; 

 but in 14 days time they get feathers, and recover their bight yet 

 sooner,, and afterwards fly away in flocks. They are black, only 

 white on the forehead ; their bodies not large, resembling ordinary 

 wild ducks, and are of a good taste, but too fat, having near as much 

 fat as lean. 1 killed some of them as soon as they had been cast 

 out at Sekadulze ; and opening their bodies, I found in them 

 much sand, and in some few small fishes, in others green stuff like 

 grass or herbs ; which was the more strange, because I never found 

 any green thing growing in any of the subterraneous grottos or lakes 

 in Carniola. Almost every year, at a hole in the mountain called 

 Storseg, about half a German mile from the lake of Zirknitz, near 

 the town of Laas., whenever there happen great floods of rain, this 



H 4 



