210 REACTION OF THE INTERIOR OF THE EARTH 



offers a remarkable example of ordinary rain water sinking 

 to a great depth, where it acquires heat, and afterwards re- 

 appears at the surface of the earth as a thermal spring. 

 When, in September 1759, Jorullo was suddenly elevated to 

 a height of 1682 English feet above the surrounding plain, 

 the two small streams called Eio de Cutimba and Rio de San 

 Pedro disappeared, and some time afterwards broke forth 

 afresh from the ground during severe earthquake shocks, 

 forming springs, whose temperature, in 1803, I found to be 

 05.8 Cent, (or 150.4 Mir.) 



The springs in Greece still flow at the same places as 

 in the Hellenic times : the spring of Erasinos, on the slope 

 of the Chaon, two hours' journey to the south of Argos, 

 was mentioned by Herodotus ; the Cassotis at Delphi, now 

 the well of St. Nicholas, still rises on the south of the 

 Lesche, and its waters pass under the temple of Apollo ; the 

 Castalian fount still flows at the foot of Parnassus, and the 

 Pirenian near Aero-Corinth ; the thermal waters of ^Edepsos 

 in Euboea, in which Sylla bathed during the war of Mithri- 

 dates, still exist. ( 2o6 ) I take pleasure in citing these details, 

 which shew that, in a country subject to frequent and 

 violent earthquakes, the relative condition of the strata, and 

 even of those narrow fissures through which these waters find 

 a passage, has continued unaltered during at least two thou- 

 sand years. The " Fontaine jaillissante" of Lillers, in the 

 Departement du Pas de Calais, bored in 1126, still reaches 

 the same height, and gives the same quantity of water, as at 

 first. I may add that the excellent geographer of the Cara- 

 manian coast, Captain Beaufort, saw in the district of the 

 ancient Phaselis, the same flames fed by emissions of the 

 same inflammable gas, which Pliny has described as the flame 

 of the Lycian Chimera. ( 207 ) 



