CATARACTS, AND INUNDATIONS. 149 



4. Bituminous Fountain at Cracow, with a Notice of various 

 other inflammable Springs. 



By Dr. Tancred Robinson. 



WHEN I delivered my thoughts* concerning boiling fountains, 

 their varieties and causes, I had not then time enough to mention 

 the burning ones, except that not only Wigan in Lancashire, with 

 which those burning fountains, near Grenoble in Dauphine, near 

 Cibinium or Hermaustadt in Transylvajiia ; Hear Chermay, a village 

 in Switzerland, m the Canton of Friburgh; and that not far from 

 Cracovia in Poland, do agree in many particulars; as in being ac. 

 tually cold, yet inflammable and taking fire at a distance, on the 

 application of any light body; which the boiling springs near Peroui 

 will not do ; this ought to be understood of them in their sources, 

 because when removed from thence, neither the waters, nor their 

 earths will produce any such phenomena* as boiling or flaming. 



It is related of the burning fountain in the palatinate of Cracow, 

 that on evaporating the water, a dark or pitch-like substance may 

 be extracted, which cures the most inveterate ulcers in a very short 

 time ; and that the mud itself is very powerful against rheumatic 

 and gouty pains, palsies, scabs, &c. The inhabitants of an adja- 

 cent village, drinking much of the spring, do generally live to 10O 

 or 150 years, which is attributed to the sanative virtue of the 



water |. 



Phil. Trans. 1685. 



than in the preceding instance of Wigan -Well. And to the reader a little 

 .acquainted with the prodigious quantities of this material that are frequently 

 forming in cavities below the surface of the earth, it is only necessary for him 

 to revert to the extensive and tremendous mischief produced by it on a late 

 occasion at Felling Colliery, as already related in chapter xxxviii. section viii, 

 of the present work. EDITOR. 



* See Section v. 1. of the present chapter. 



-f We have already noticed in a preceding extract from Mr. Good's Trans- 

 lation of Lucretius, see p. 146, a more perfect pitch or bitumen obtained from a 

 spring at Amiano, in the Ligurian Republic, and which the inhabitants of the 

 country have been ingenious enough to employ for the purpose of lighting 

 their towns and cities. And the ensuing article will be found to contain a far 

 more extensive instance of a similar secretion, and capable perhaps of being 

 converted to still more usefnl purposes, and upon a much larger scale. 



EDITOH. 



L3 



