220 COSMOS. 



schan, at the foot of a mountain covered with perpetual snow 

 (lat. 31 40'), from long, open, inaccessible fissures : a pheno- 

 menon which reminds us of the perpetual fire of the Shag- 

 dagh mountain in the Caucasus. 



On the Inland of Java, in the province of Samarang, 

 at a distance of about fourteen miles from the north coast, 

 there are salses similar to those of Turbaco and Galera 

 Zamba. Very variable hills of 25 to 30 feet in height, 

 throw out mud, salt-water, and a singular mixture of 

 hydrogen gas and carbonic-acid 76 ; a phenomenon which is 

 not to be confounded with the vast and destructive streams 

 of mud which are poured forth during the rare eruptions of 

 the true, colossal volcanoes of Java (Gununq Kelut and 

 Gunung Idjen). Some mofette-grottoes or sources of car- 

 bonic acid in Java are also very celebrated, particularly in 

 consequence of exaggerations in the statements of some 

 travellers, as also from their connexion with the myth of the 

 Upas poison-tree, already mentioned by Sykes and Loudon. 

 The most remarkable of the six has been scientifically de- 

 scribed by Junghuhn, the so-called Vale of death of the 

 island (PaJcaraman) in the mountain Dieng, near Batur. 

 It is a funnel-shaped sinking on the declivity of a moun- 

 tain, a depression in which the stratum of carbonic acid 

 emitted attains a very different height at different seasons. 

 Skeletons of wild hogs, tigers, and birds are often found in 

 it. 76 The poison-tree, pohon (or better puhn) upas of the 

 Malays (Antiaris toxicaria of the traveller Leschenault de 



75 According to Diard, Asie Centrale, t. ii, p. 515. Besides the mud 

 volcanoes of Damak and Surabaya, there are upon other islands of the 

 Indian Archipelago the mud volcanoes of Pulu-Semao, Pulu-Kambing, 

 and Pulu-Koti : see Junghuhn, Java, seine Gestalt und Pflanzendeckc, 

 1852, Abth. iii, s. 830. 



? 6 Junghuhn, Op. cit., Abth. i, s. 201, and Abth. iii, s. 854858. 

 The weaker suffocating caves on Java are Gua-Upas and Gua-Galan 

 (the first word is the Sanscrit, gnhd, cave). As there can certainly be 

 no doubt that the Grotto del Cane, in the vicinity of the Lago di Agnano 

 is the same that Pliny (ii, cap. 93) described nearly 18 centuries ago, 

 "in agro Puteolano," as "Charonea scrobis mortiferum spiritum 

 exhalans," we must certainly share in the surprise felt by Scacchi 

 (Memorie geol. sulla Campania, 1849, p. 48), that in a loose soil, so 

 often moved by earthquakes, so small a phenomenon (the supply of 

 a small quantity of carbonic acid) can have remained unaltered and un- 

 disturbed. 



