We see issue from the ground steam and gaseous carbonic acid,
almost always free from the admixture of nitrogen;* carbureted hydrogen gas,
which has been used in the Chinese province Sse-tschuan** for several
thousand years, and recently in the village of Fredonia, in the State of New
York, United States, in cooking and for illumination; sulphureted hydrogen
gas and sulphurous vapors; and, more rarely,*** sulphurous and hydrochloric
acids.****
[footnote] * Bischof's comprehensive work, 'Warmelchere des inneren
Erdkorpers'.
[footnote] **On the Artesian fire-springs (Ho-tsing) in China, and the
ancient use of portable gas (in bamboo canes) in the city of Khiung-tsheu,
see Klaproth, in my 'Asie Centrale', t. iii., p. 519-530.
[footnote] *** Boussingault ('Annales de Chimie', t. lii., p. 181) observed
no evolution of hydrochloric acid from the volcanoes of New Granada, while
Monticelli found it in enormous quantity in the eruption of Vesuvius in 1813.
[footnote] ****[Of the gaseous compounds of sulphur, one, sulphurous acid,
appears to predominate chiefly in volcanoes possessing a certain degree of
activity, while the other, sulphureted hydrogen, has been most frequently
perceived among those in a dormant condition.
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