NOTES AND QUEEIES. 
153 
oscillations in this column of water, during which the steam finds oppoi-tunity to escape, 
and carries up with it a great part of the water. Another class of writers have adopted 
a theory put forward by Buusen, in which the Geyser tube alone, without a subterranean 
cavern, is supposed to contain water, heat being applied to the tube itself, and the relief 
of pressure which results from the elevation of the upper portion of the water playing an 
important part in the operation. In this case, however, as in the former, the notion of 
steam being suddenly generated is preserved, heated rocks being supposed to furnish the 
necessary supply of local heat. 
"Now, Mr. ^Villiams's theory most amply and beautifully accounts for all the pheno- 
mena of these Geysers, without assuming the existence either of intense local heat or of 
sudden evolutions of heat. Simply assuming the existence of a subterranean heat of 
some kind — and all now admit the existence of that — also the presence of water in and 
below the tube, and, in his view, the generation and accumulation of steam must take 
place. As the quantity of this steam goes on increasing, the moment will arrive when 
the saturation of the water will have taken place, and after that a more or less violent 
discharge of steam must follow. It seems reasonable to suppose that the Geyser tube is 
not an isolaled reservoir, and that it opens into wells or springs below of greater or less 
extent ; and in this way the enormous amount of the discharges that issue from these 
Geysers may be accounted for, whereas the tube alone seems of wholly insuflRcient capa- 
city to supply them. 
*' 1 would now ask you to observe the apparatus which we have here, and which Mr. 
"Williams himself constructed. It consists simply of a tube opening into a vessel of water 
below, and a basin above, the tube and lower vessel being tilled with water which rises 
up and partly fills the basin. Heat is now applied below ; steam is, as we think, accu- 
mulating in the water; now you hear explosive sounds and observe commotion in the 
fluid ; and now a violent and copious discharge of steam and water-bursts, Geyser-like, 
from the basin. The action now subsides ; the water returns from the basin down the 
tube to the reservoir below ; and presently all these phenomena will repeat themselves, 
just as they do in nature. The Geyser, then, like the miniature working model before 
us, consists of a large reservoir below, a single tube or orifice of exit, and a basin above, 
which receives a large portion of tlic ejected water, to be returned to the reservoir below. 
This reservoir being necessarily full of water, the steam generated must remain and ac- 
cumulate in it until the point of saturation has been reached, which will depend on the 
height of the column of water in the vertical tube of exit, the temperature in the reser- 
voir corresponding with that elevation. In the miniature, that temperature is found to 
be 215^ when the'discharge takes place. In the Geyser, this must be considerably higher, 
the tube of exit being there 47 feet. ^Ve thus see that the Geyser and its miniature 
correspond iu action and result." 
Shell-Mounds.— Dr. Collingwood, in the Proceedings of the Liverpool 
Philosophical Society (1863), says, " My friend Mr. I. Byerley, of Sea- 
combe, has met with remains on the shores of the Mersey, which appear 
to resemble the deposits known as kitchen middens. He informs me 'that 
strata of shells exist at Wallasey, and in the sand-hills along the shore, be- 
tween Leasowe and Hoylake, w hich seem to resemble, on a small scale, 
the collections noticed by Mr. Lubbock, under the name of ' shell mounds 
in Scotland, and of ' Kjakkenmbddings ' iu Denmark. On gomg down the 
hill, just before entering Wallasey village, there is a bank, which may be 
twenty feet or more high, on the right-hand side ; two-thirds of its height 
is composed of sandstone, above which is a covering of earth from four to 
six feet in thickness ; between the latter and the sandstone, a stratum ot 
mussel-shells, about eight inches thick, may be seen. The shells are partly 
whole and partly broken ; all, of course, are free from epidermis, but tne 
striated colouring is as distinct as in recent specimens of the species. 
Having, however, lost much of their animal element, they are more triable ; 
and on being placed in water for the purpose of cleansing them, the outer 
layer of shell-structure readily separates from the nacreous interior. Ihis 
YOL. YII. 
