Medical Topography of Upper Scinde. 221 



Our author proceeds to state, that it is " unquestionable 

 that mephitic air is escaping from the rock at Sukkur." 

 This however, he says is not usually admitted, and he re- 

 marks that " to such, as trust their own five senses, to the 

 exclusion of their reasoning power, argument is in vain." 

 To such Dr. Kirk says, I cannot demonstrate the fact, but 

 we must have sulphuretted hydrogen disengaged, because 

 my reason tells me that we have " sulphates formed and 

 forming under ground." His reason has discovered this, but 

 we want proof of the fact. That such operations are going 

 on, on any extensive scale cannot be assumed from the state- 

 ment admitting it to be quite correct, unaccompanied by any 

 analysis of the water, that wells on being first opened fre- 

 quently emit a sulphurous smell, and contain sulphates. 



Our author next states, that it is on record that dreadful 

 epidemics have been produced during the continuance of vol- 

 canic action, and wanders in his notes into some singularly in- 

 appropriate quotations from Scripture regarding the countries 

 about the Levant, and here we should expect the analogy 

 of Scinde in these respects to be demonstrated, but no — not 

 a single earthquake, not a convulsion of nature has our 

 author recorded as having ever occurred in Scinde. His 

 reason has taught him that unspent volcanic action must be 

 going on. He might however have pitied his weaker brethren, 

 those whose minds cannot so readily jump at a conclusion, 

 and might have thought it just possible that they might not 

 all be able to perceive these things intuitively, especially as, to 

 use a familiar illustration, they never heard of the unhealthi- 

 ness of Naples, situated close to one of the most persistent 

 points of modern volcanic agency. 



Dr. Kirk has been at the trouble to coin a new word for 

 his mephitic air, to which he gives the name of Sesmaria, a 

 barbarous compound of Greek and Italian, not of Greek and 

 Latin, as he supposes ; but we think he is premature, and 

 it would have been more satisfactory to himself and to 



