Page images
PDF
EPUB

25. A much stranger flame than that which issues out of the earth, is that which issues out of the stomach of animals. The anatomical lecturer at Pisa, in the year 1597, happening to hold a lighted candle near the subject he was dissecting, on a sudden set on fire the vapours that came out of the stomach he had just opened. In the same year, as Dr. Ruisch, then anatomy professor at Pisa, was dissecting a woman, a student lighting him with a candle, he had no sooner opened the stomach, than there issued out a yellow greenish flame. A like thing happened some years after at Lyons, in dissecting a woman. Her stomach was no sooner opened, than a considerable flame burst out and filled the place. But this is not so much to be wondered at, since the experiments made by Dr. Vulpari, anatomical professor at Bologna. He affirms, any one may see, issuing from the stomach of an animal, a matter that burns like spirits of wine, if the upper and lower orifices are bound fast with a very strong thread. The stomach thus tied must be cut, above and under the ligature, and afterwards pressed with both hands, so as to make all that it contains, pass to one side. This will produce a swelling in that part, which must be held with the left hand to hinder its escaping. A candle then being held about half an inch from the stomach, let it be suddenly opened by the right hand, and a bluish flame will immediately gush out, which will sometimes last a minute. In the same way flame may be brought forth from the intestines.

Nor is it from carcasses only that flames have issued. This has been the case with live persons likewise. Bartholine, relates, that a popish cavalier, having drank a quantity of brandy died in a little space, after an eruption of a flame through his mouth. He relates also the case of three others, who after drinking much brandy experienced the same symptom. Two presently died; the third escaped by immediately drinking cold water. Still more astonishing is the case of a woman at Paris who used to drink brandy to excess. She was one night reduced to ashes by a fire from within, all but her head and the ends of her fingers. In like manner Cornelia Bandi, an aged lady of unblemished life, near Cesena in Romagna, in 1731, retired in the evening into her chamber; and in the morning was found in the middle of the room, reduced to ashes, all except her face, skull, three fingers and her legs, which remained entire, with her shoes and stockings. The ashes were light: the floor was smeared with a gross, stinking moisture, and the wall and furniture covered with a moist soot, which had stained all the linen in the chest.

Perhaps a larger account of so remarkable an incident will not be unacceptable to the curious reader.

generally imputed to quite different causes. The Giant's Causeway in Ireland, and all other strong concretions of the same kind, where pillars are formed by pentagon, hexagon, or multangular stones, placed one upon another, are commonly supposed to be formed by a deposition of stony matter from an aqueous fluid. On the contrary, is evident from various considerations, respecting their structure and phænomena, that they are concretions of a peculiar kind, generated by an igneous fluid. They are peculiar to volcanic countries, and differ in every respect from the crystals produced by the slow and successive precipitation of the stony particles contained in water. Their formation is owing to an intrinsic principle of organization, operating on an ignified fluid: on the concretion of which that principle may be supposed to have operated simultaneously in a large mass, and to have produced these bodies in the same manner, as a linget of metal concretes at once in the mould. In Persia there is a subterraneous fire of a very harmless nature. It rises out of the ground, about twenty miles from Baku, and three from the Caspian sea. The ground is rocky, but has a shollow covering of earth. If this be any where scraped off, and fire applied to the place, it catches fire immediately, and burns without diminution, nor ever goes out, unless you throw cold earth over it, by which it is easily extinguished. A piece of ground, about two English miles in extent, has this wonderful property. In many parts of it there is a continual flame: the chief is in a hole about four feet deep and fourteen in diameter. This is said to have burned many thousand years. They burn stones into lime, by filling a hole in the ground with them, and then putting a lighted candle into the hole. The fire immediately kindles, and in about three days burns the stones sufficiently.

It is remarkable, that this flame, how great soever it be, gives neither smoke no smell. There is much naphtha all about the place, though not just where the fire is.

Doubtless an inflammable vapour issues in abundance out of the ground in this place. Something of the same kind is found between Bologna and Florence, on the side of one of the Appennines. On a spot of ground three or four miles diameter, there is a constant eruption of fire. The flame rises very high; yet without noise, smoke, or smell. In great rains it sometimes intermits, but afterwards burns with the greater vigour. There are three other such fires on the same mountains. Probably they rise from the veins of bitumen.

20. A late ingenious writer ascribes all earthquakes to the same cause, electricity. The impression, says he, they make on land and water, to the greatest distance, is instantaneous. This can only be effected by electricity. In the late earthquake,

the concussion was felt through the space of a hundred miles length, and forty in breadth, at the same instant. Now what could throw a tract of land, of four thousand square miles in surface, into such an agitation in a moment? No natural power is equal to this, but that of electricity, which alone acknowledges no bounds, neither any sensible transition of time.

The little damage done by most earthquakes, is another argument, for their being occasioned by a simple vibration of the earth, through an electric shock. This vibration on the water, meeting with the solid bottom of ships, occasions that thump which is felt by them. That this shakes millions of ordinary houses, and yet not one of them fails, is a farther proof, that it is not a convulsion in the bowels of the earth, but an uniform vibration, like what we occasion in a glass, by rubbing our finger on the edge; which may be brought to such a pitch, as to break the glass in pieces, by an electric repulsion of its parts.

There can be little doubt, but some earthquakes are owing to electricity; but many more are owing to other causes: those of Callao, Lima, Port Royal, for instance, were unquestionably owing to water: those in the neighbourhood of Etna and Vesuvius, with those in the East-Indies, to lakes of fire. The grand fault is therefore the ascribing them either to electricity, or any one cause, exclusive of the rest: whereas some are owing to each of these causes: some to several of them acting conjointly.

21. We have inflammable vapours in England, in three or four different places.

One who accurately observed it, gives the following particular account of a burning well:

"In the latter end of February, I went to see a spring in the road, which leads from Wigan to Warrington. When we came to it, and applied a lighted candle to the surface of the water, there was suddenly a large and vigorous flame produced. But having filled a cup with water at the flaming place, and held a lighted candle to it, it went out. Yet the water at that place boiled like water over a fire: though when I put my hand into it, it did not feel so much as warm. This boiling seems to proceed from some sulphureous fumes, the spring being not above forty yards from a coal-pit, and all the country for many miles round being underlaid with coal.

When the water was drained away, I applied the candle to the surface of the earth where the water burned before. The fumes took fire and burnt very bright and vigorous, the flame ascended a foot and a half from the ground; and the basis of it was as broad as a man's hat at the brims. It was not discoloured like that of sulphur, nor had any scent. I ordered a

bucket of water to be poured on the fire, and it was immediately quenched."

22. There was a spring of the same kind at Brosely, near Wenlock, in the county of Salop. It was discovered in June, 1711, by a terrible noise in the night, which awaked several people in their beds, who, desiring to know what it was, rose up, and coming to a boggy place under a little hill about two hundred yards from the Severn, perceived a mighty rumbling and shaking of the earth, and a little water boiling up through the grass. When they dug up some of the earth, the water flew up to a great height, and a candle that was in their hand, set the vapour on fire. There is now (viz. in 1711) an iron cistern round the spring, with a cover, having a hole in the middle of it. If you put a lighted candle to the hole, the water takes fire, and burns like spirits of wine. It burns as long as you keep the air from it; but if you take up the cover, it goes out. The heat of this fire exceeds that of common fire. Some people, after they have set the water on fire, have put a kettle of water over the cistern, with a joint of meat in it. It was boiled much sooner than it could be, by any artificial fire. If you put wood or even green boughs upon it, It presently consumes them to ashes. The water of itself feels as cold as any common water. Nay, if you put your hand into it as soon as the fire is out, it feels as cold as if there had been no fire near it. But it still continues boiling up, with a considerable noise..

But this well was lost for many years. The poor man in whose land it was, missing the profit he use to have by shewing it, used all his endeavours to find it again; and in May, 1744, hearing a rumbling noise under ground, a little nearer the river than the former well was, he lighted upon it again. For five or six feet deep, it was above six feet wide. Within this was a smaller hole, of like depth, dug in the clay, in the bottom of which was a cylindric earthen vessel, four or five inches diameter, having the bottom taken off, and the sides fixed in the clay. Within the pot was brown water, thick as puddle, continually forced up with a violent motion and a hollow noise, rising and falling by turns, five or six inches. Upon putting a candle at the end of a stick, within a quarter of a yard, it took fire, darting and flashing in a violent manner, about half a yard high much like spirits in a lamp, but with a greater agitation. The man said it had made a tea-kettle boil in nine minutes, and that it would burn forty-eight hours without any sensible diminution. It was extinguished by putting a wet mop upon it. And still the water felt very cold.

The well lay about thirty yards from the Severn, which in that place, and for some miles above and below, runs in a vale full a hundred yards perpendicular below the level of the country on

either side.

But the well is now lost again, the water being drawn off by a coalpit.

23. There is a fire of the same kind at Pietra Mala, a village on the Appennines. The flame is extremely bright, covers a surface of three yards by two, and usually rises about four feet. After great rains or snows, the whole bare patch, about nine yards diameter, flames. The gravel out of which it rises, at a very little depth, is quite cold. There are four of these fires in the neighbourhood: the middle of the ground whence one of them rises, is a little hollowed, and has in it a puddle of water, through which there are strong ebullitions of air. This air will not take fire; but that which rises through the wet and cold gravel, flames briskly.

In Dauphiny, and some other parts of France, the surface of several springs take fire in the same manner on the approach of a candle. Sulphureous vapours undoubtedly exhale from the waters as is the case in the famous Grotto del Cani.

This lies on the side of a little hill, between Naples and Pozzoli. The sides of it are cut perpendicular in the earth. It is about three feet wide; near twelve feet long; five or six feet high at the entrance, and less than three feet at the farther end. The ground slopes a little from this end to the mouth, and more from thence to the road. If you stand a few steps without, and stoop so as to have your eye nearly on a level with the ground of the grotto, you may see a vapour within, like that which appears over a chafing dish of red hot coals, only that it is more sluggish and does not rise above five or six inches high. Its surface more distinctly terminated than that of other vapours, balances visibly under the air, as if unwilling to mix with it.

The ground of the grotto is always moist; and so are the sides to the height of ten inches. Yet this never increases so as to form any drops. While you stand upright, you remark nothing more, than a slight earthy smell, common in all subterraneous places which are kept shut. But if you put down your hand, within ten inches of the ground, it feels as if you put it into the steam of boiling water. Yet your hand contracts neither smell nor taste. A vapour similar to that in the grotto, rises also from the ground without. But it is weaker, and does not rise so high. This partly spreads itself from the cavern, partly exhales from the earth.

A lighted flambeau thrust into the vapour, presently goes out; yet without any noise or hissing. The thick smoke which appears immediately after its extinction, remains floating on the vapour, and being lighter than it, but heavier than the air above it, spreads between both. Indeed common smoke is lighter than air; but that impregnated with the vapour is heavier.

If a young vigorous dog be held down within the vapour, he at

« PreviousContinue »