DISCREPANCIES. 



crystals of gypsum, three inches long, and of sul- 

 phate of soda. "The mud, in many places, was 

 thrown up by numbers of some kind of worm. 

 How surprising is it that any creatures should be 

 able to exist in brine, and that they should be 

 crawling among crystals of sulphate of soda and 

 lime! And what becomes of these worms when, 

 during the long summer, the surface is hardened 

 into a solid layer of salt?'* Exactly similar 

 lakes, similarly peopled, occur in Siberia also.t 



Perhaps even stranger still is the circumstance 

 that fishes— vertebrate animals far higher in the 

 organic scale than shrimps or worms — can sub- 

 sist, apparently in health, in water sufficiently 

 heated to boil them if dead. Rroussonet found, 

 by experiments, that several species of fresh-water 

 fishes lived many days in water so hot that the 

 human hand could not be held in it for a single 

 minute. Saussure found living eels in the hot 

 springs of Aix, in Savoy, in which the tempera- 

 ture is pretty regularly 113 deg. of Fahrenheit. 

 But still more extraordinary are the facts recorded 

 by Humboldt and Bonpland, who saw living 

 fishes, apparently in health and vigour, thrown 

 up from the crater of a volcano in South America, 

 with water and hot vapour that raised the 

 thermometer to 210 deg. Fahrenheit, a heat 

 less, by only two degrees, than that of boiling 

 water. 



The same accomplished travellers visited hot 

 springs in Venezuela, the temperature of which 

 was above 194 deg., and which boiled eggs in less 

 than four minutes. The vegetation around seemed 

 to rejoice in the heat, being unusually luxuriant, 

 the mimosas and fig-trees spreading their branches 



* " Naturalist's Vcyage," chap. iv. 



+ Pallas's " Travels," 1793 to 1794, pp. 129-134. 



77 



