86 GAS-JETS; MUD-VOLCANOES, 



Lenz saw, on the mud-plains of Baku, a great 

 number of these cones, about two feet high, 

 standing near each other. Such spots as these, 

 which throw up liquid mud, are called Mud- 

 volcanoes* There are many of these in various 

 countries ; for instance in several places in Italy; 

 at Maina, not far fromModena; at Querzuola, 

 in the neighbourhood of Eeggio, &c. ; again there 

 is the Macaluba, a hundred and fifty feet high, 

 near Girgenti in Sicily; and the famous mud- 

 volcanoes, in the Crimea, and in the neigh- 

 bouring peninsula of Taman, &c. 



The several outlets, which the gas has bored for 

 itself in the mud cones, seem sometimes not to be 

 enough for the escape of the stores, of highly 

 elastic gas that are shut up within. Violent out- 

 bursts then take place, accompanied with a roar 

 that may often be heard at a great distance, and 

 with vast discharges of mud and water. In an out- 

 burst of Kuku-Obo, in the peninsula of Taman, 

 in the year 1794, about twenty-six million cubic 

 feet of mud were poured forth. 



* The water thrown up from these mud- volcanoes often 

 tastes strongly of salt. Another substance that very com- 

 monly comes from them is petroleum, or earth-naphtha ; 

 some of it is flung up with the mud, and some is found 

 flowing out of the earth, in the form of springs, in the 

 neighbourhood. 



