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caverns at the foot of one of the mountains of the Julian alps, 

 of which wonderful narrations have been given in the older 

 works of Sartori, Valvassor, &c. which it is the object of M. 

 Knopfer, whose paper is noticed, to correct. The basin 

 of the lake is surrounded by mountains, so that the waters 

 rushing into it could find no exit but for the loose and 

 perforated limestone through which it forces a subterranean 

 passage. When the water entering the lake is lessened, as 

 in the dry summer months, the discharge being always the 

 same, the lake falls. If at this time there should be storms 

 or continued rain, the lake rises. The monks of Freudenthal 

 in the seventeenth century, who like most people of the 

 present day were fond of fish, and to whom the perio- 

 dical drying up of the lake was particularly inconvenient, 

 prevented this by covering the opening with an iron grat- 

 ing on which they placed slabs of stone : in this manner 

 they often succeeded in keeping the lake filled for several 

 years, until the dissolution of the fraternity, when the lake 

 was left to ebb and flow its own way. M. Knopfer says, 



" That when he obtained a view of the village of Zirknitz, and the 

 small towns lying around it in the plain, he looked in vain for a sheet 

 of water resembling a lake, he could only see on the opposite hills 

 a longitudinal white stripe, which at a distance has the aspect of a 

 sandy steppe. This was in fact the deep bed of the lake, in which the 

 small quantity of water remaining behind flowed in separate large chan- 

 nels like artificially formed canals (which rendered impossible an ascent 

 for any great distance,) towards several larger openings, into which 

 it fell with a rumbling noise. Two of these breaches were distinguished 

 by their size and considerable depth. Several, perhaps all, of these 

 passages for water, might soon unite in their subterranean course into 

 one and the same canal, or might soon again separate, according as the 

 power of the water could, by its natural pressure, form passages in the 

 weathered and perforated beds of limestone. Eventually the water 

 again makes its appearance in Freudenthal, near Ober-Laibach, from 

 copious springs, and forms, by being united in a channel, the river 

 Laibach, which, with exception of the time during which the lake is 

 dry. is navigable at its very source." 



