202 COSMOS. 



slag-like fragments as products of eruption; and during 

 the great eruption of flame of Backlichli (7th February, 

 1839), small hollow balls, like the so-called ashes of the true 

 volcanoes, were carried by the wind to a long distance.* 



In the northwestern extremity, toward the Cimmerian 

 Bosphorus, are the mud volcanoes of the peninsula of Ta- 

 inan, which form one group with those of Aklanisowka and 

 Jenikale, near Kertsch. One of the salses of Taman ex- 

 hibited an eruption of mud and gas on the 27th of Febru- 

 ary, 1793, in which, after much subterranean noise, a col- 

 umn of fire half enveloped in black smoke (dense aqueous 

 vapor ?) rose to a height of several hundred feet. It is a re- 

 markable phenomenon, and instructive as regards the nature 

 of the Volcandtos de Turbaco, that the gas of Taman, which 

 was tested in 1811 by Frederick Parrot and Engelhardt, 

 was not inflammable; while the gas collected by Gobel in 

 the same place, twenty-three years later, burned, from the 

 mouth of a glass tube, with a bluish flame, like all emana- 

 tions from the salses in the southeastern Caucasus, but also, 

 when carefully analyzed, contained in 100 parts 92-8 of car- 

 bureted hydrogen and 5 parts of carbonic oxyd gas.l 



A phenomenon certainly nearly allied to these in its 

 origin, although different as regards the matter produced, is 

 presented by the eruptions of boracic acid vapors in the 

 Tuscan Maremma, known under the names of lagoni, fum- 

 marole, soffioni, and even volcani, near Possara, Castel Novo, 

 and Monte Cerboli. The vapors have an average tempera- 

 ture of 205 to 212, and according to Pella, in certain 

 points, as much as 347. They rise in part directly from 

 clefts in the rocks, and partly from stagnant pools, in which 

 they throw up small cones of fluid clay. They are seen to 

 diffuse themselves in the air in whitish eddies. The boracic 

 acid, which is brought up by the aqueous vapors from the 

 bosom of the earth, can not be obtained when the vapors of 

 the soffioni are condensed in very wide and long tubes, but 



* Humboldt, Asie Centrale, t. ii., p. 511 and 513. I have already 

 (t. ii., p. 201) called attention to the fact that Edrisi does not men- 

 tion the fire of Baku, although it is described diffusely as a Nefala- 

 land, that is to say, rich in burning naphtha springs, by Massudi Coth- 

 beddin, two hundred years before, in the tenth century (see Frahn, 

 Ibn Fozlan, p. 245 ; and on the etymology of the Median word naph- 

 tha, Asiatic Journal, vol. xiii., p. 124). 



t Compare Moritz von Engelhardt and F. Parrot, Reise in die Krym 

 und den Kaukasus, 1815, th. i., s. 71 ; with Gobel, Reise in die Steppen 

 des siidlichen Russlands, 1838, th. i., s. 249-253, and th. ii., s. 138-144. 



