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THE YELLOWSTONE PARK GEYSERS
THEIR ESSENTIAL FACTS AND CAUSES
I have been to school. Dame Nature is a most kind and skillful
teacher. She first put me into the ABC class, and advanced me through
conic sections. The first thing in the geyser line she showed me was a
mound of rock, large as a small cock of hay, with a projection on top
large as a shallow pint bowl turned upside down. In the center of this
was a half-inch hole, and from it every two seconds, with a musical
chuckle of steam, a handful of diamond drops of water was ejected to a
height of from two to five feet. I sat down with it half an hour,
compelled to continuous laughter by its own musical cachinnations.
There were all the essentials of a geyser. There was a mound, not
always existent, built up by deposits from the water supersaturated
with mineral. It might be three feet high; it might be thirty. There
was the jet of water ejected by subterranean forces. It might be half
an inch in diameter; it might be three hundred feet, as in the case of
the Excelsior geyser. It might rise six inches; it might rise two
hundred and fifty feet. There was the interval between the jets. It
might be two seconds; it might be weeks or years.
[Illustration: Formation of the Grotto Geyser.]
A subsequent lesson in my Progressive Geyser Reader was the "Economic.
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