INTERMITTENT SPRINGS.
One of the most remarkable of these is at Bolder-Born in Westphalia. After flowing for twenty-four hours, it entirely ceases for the space of six hours. It then returns with a loud noise, in a stream sufficiently powerful to turn three mills very near its source. Another spring of the same nature occurs at Bihar in Hungary, which issues many times a day, from the foot of a mountain, in such a quantity as in a few minutes to fill the channel of a considerable stream.
The Lay Well near Torbay, ebbs and flows sixteen times in an hour: and in Giggleswick Well in Yorkshire, the water sometimes rises and falls in ten or fifteen minutes.
St. Anthony's Well, on Arthur's Seat, near Edinburgh, has a similar movement, but on a smaller scale.
In Savoy, near the lake of Bourget, is another spring of this kind, but it differs from those which have been already mentioned in being very uncertain in its intervals.
CURIOUS JEWEL WHICH BELONGED TO JAMES I.
In former times it was a common practice with princes and nobles to have elaborate articles of jewellery constructed in such forms as had a religious and emblematical signification. An inventory of the Dukes of Burgundy, made in 1396, speaks of a fleur-de-lys which opened, and contained inside a picture of the Crucifixion. In 1416, the Duke of Berri had "a fair apple," which opened, and contained within on one side the figure of Christ, and on the other that of the Virgin. Among the jewels of the Dukes of Burgundy in 1392 there were two pears of gold, enamelled, each containing an image of Our Lady. We find similar entries in the other different inventories of the Dukes of Burgundy: An apple of silver, enamelled, containing in the inside a picture of St. Catherine, in 1400; a pine-apple of gold, which contained figures of the birth of Christ, and of the three kings, in 1467; and, in the same year, two apples of gold, one containing, on the opposite halves, Our Lady and St. Paul, the other, St. Peter and St. Paul—the latter suspended by three small chains. These kinds of devices continued in fashion till a much later period, and a very curious example, from the collection of Lord Londesborough, which appears to have belonged to King James I., is here engraved.