FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 
533 
great eruption of Vesuvius, on the 12th of August, 1805, Humboldt 
and Gaj'-Lussac perceived a bituminous odour prevailing at times in the 
ignited crater. 
There is not much doubt left now that it is naphtha that burns in 
several of those remarkable pi'oductions of nature, the perpetual burn- 
ing springs — more especially in the famous Asiatic Chimcera (in Lycia, 
on the coast of Asia Minor). In many springs of this kind it has been 
supposed that it was carburetted hydrogen gas (carbide of hydrogen) 
that burns. " We see issue from the ground," says Humboldt, speak- 
ing of gaseous emanations in general,* " steam and gaseous carbonic 
acid — almost free from the admixture of nitrogen — carburetted hydrogen 
gas, which has been used in the Chinese province of Sse-tschaun for 
several thousand years, and recently in the village of Fredonia, in the 
State of New York (U.S.), in cooking and for illuminatioa." But it is 
difficult to account for so continual a supply of gas, always emanating 
from nearly the same spot. Indeed, this objection might be raised 
respecting naphtha, but it loses, perhaps, a little of its force in the 
latter case. 
At the time Captain Beaufort visited the famous Chimoara in Lycia 
(he published his observations in 1 820), it was thought to be a spring 
of burning carburetted hydrogen gas. Since that time the same spot 
has been visited by many travellers curious to see a perpetual fire that 
has been burning now for several thousand years, and which has been 
spoken of by Pliny, f Seneca, J Ctesias,§ Strabo,|| among the ancients, 
and a host of more modern writers. Lieut. Spratt and Professor Edward 
Forbes found this spring as brilliant as ever, just as Beaufort had left it, 
perhaps even somewhat increased. They speak of soot being deposited 
by its flames ; ^ this seems to prove that it is naphtha that burns, and 
not carburetted hydrogen, for the latter would deposit no soot. But 
what gives more probability to this assertion is the agreeable odour re- 
marked near this spring by a more recent traveller, Albert Berg, a dis- 
tinguished German artist. 
The Chiraogra rises from serpentine rocks associated with limestone, 
somewhat similar to the formation observed by Murchison and Parets 
in the districts of Tuscany, where the boracic acid fumarolle exist, of 
which we shall speak presently ; and, curious to relate, it appears pro- 
able, from certain ancient traditions, that some of these boracic acid 
springs were once luminous (ignited) during the night. 
At the bottom of a crater-like cavity, from which the combustible 
vapours issue in the Chimcera, is a shallow pool of sulphurous and 
turbid water, which is regarded by the natives of these parts as a 
sovereign remedy for all kinds of skin-disease. 
Albert Berg has described the famous Asiatic Chimcera** as follows : 
" Near the ruins of the ancient temple of Vulcan rise the remains of a 
• Cosmos, Vol. I. t ii. 106. % Episl. 79. § Fragm. cap. 10. |[ Lib. 14. 
*| The Turks use this soot as a remedy for sore eyelids, and value it as a dye 
for the eyebrows. 
** It is situated near the town of Deliktasch, in Lycia (Asia Minor), on the west 
coast of the Gulf of Adalia. 
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