ON ITS EXTERIOR. SPRINGS OF VAPOUR AND GAS. 209 



ashes in regular volcanoes, were carried by the wind to a 

 considerable distance.( 286 ) 



At the north-western extreme, towards the Cimmerian 

 Bosphorus, are the mud-volcanoes of the Taman penin- 

 sula, which group themselves with those of Aklanisowka 

 and Jenikale near Kertch. At one of the salses of 

 Taman there was an eruption of mud and gas on the 

 27th of February 1793, in which, after much subterra- 

 nean noise, a column of flame several hundred feet 

 high, rose into the air half-veiled in black smoke. (May 

 not the supposed smoke have been a dense cloud 

 of steam ?) It is a remarkable circumstance, and a very 

 instructive one in regard to the nature of the volcancitos 

 of Turbaco, that the gas tested at Taman in 1811, 

 by Friedrich Parrot and Engelhardt, was not inflam- 

 mable ; whereas at the same place, 23 years later, gas 

 received by Grobel in a glass tube burnt, out of the 

 tube, with a bluish flame, like the exhalations from 

 all the salses in the south-eastern part of the Caucasus ; 

 but when subjected to precise analysis was found 

 to contain out of 100 parts 92*8 of carburetted hydro- 

 gen gas and 5 parts of carbonic oxide gas. ( 287 ) 



A phenomenon assuredly allied in respect to origin to 

 those of which we are treating, although differing in the 

 substances produced, is that of the eruptions of hot bo- 

 racic vapours in the Maremma of Tuscany, known 

 under the names of " lagoni," " fumerole," " soffioni," 

 and also " volcani," at Possara, Castel Novo and Monte 

 Cerboli. The vapours have average temperatures vary- 

 ing from 204*8 to 212, and at a few points amounting 

 even to 347. They rise in some cases directly from 

 clefts in the rocks, and in others in pits, in which they 



VOL. iv. P 



