Another source of terror to the timid and nervous drinkers at Carlsbad has lately arisen. A learned German philosopher has discovered living fossil animalculæ in the waters of Carlsbad. Now if these little salamanders can “live and move, and have their being,” in the Sprudel at a temperature of 167°—or rather in the bowels of the earth, where the water is at the boiling point, or even in the form of steam, it may well be supposed that they would thrive luxuriously in the temperate climate of the human stomach, where the heat does not exceed 98° of Fahrenheit. However, the drinkers of the Thames water need have no fears respecting the INFUSORIA of Carlsbad, which would soon be devoured by the proteiform monsters which are daily ingurgitated by the citizens of London. I have already stated that some of the philosophic spa doctors have broached the doctrine, that mineral waters are merely _secretions_ from one great watery being residing deep in the bowels of the earth! As the secretions from the human body are very various, so the secretions from the mother Spa are almost innumerable, and thus the infinite variety of mineral waters is readily explained and accounted for. Q. E. D.[72] The situation of Carlsbad is very picturesque—I might say romantic. It might be pretty well characterised by a single line, descriptive of a very different locality—the valley of the UPAS TREE: “Rocks rise on rocks and fountains gush between.” The town is built partly in the valley, partly on the ledges of granite rocks that rise abruptly behind it, to a height of 1500 feet, while the lazy TEPLE— “Slow as Lethe’s stream,” creeps at a snail’s space through the vale, contrasting remarkably with the boisterous, foaming, upheaving, and boiling SPRUDEL, that gushes from unknown and unfathomable depths in the bowels of the earth, carrying health and life to its unnumbered votaries. Carlsbad cures, as a matter of course, nine-tenths of human maladies; but as King of the Spas, it has a royal prerogative of a curious and important nature—namely, the power of curing those diseases which resist the virtues of all other spas and all other remedies! In answer to a question, “why Carlsbad sustained its reputation undiminished?” HUFELAND replied—“C’est qu’il guérit des maux rebelles a tout autre moyen curatif.” It is true that, if we take the testimonies of the other spas, none of which admit their fallibility in any case, this prerogative of Carlsbad would be little more than a sinecure; but the promises of spa doctors, like the waters which they prescribe, must be taken _cum grano salis_; and we may safely conclude that some maladies present themselves at the Sprudel which have resisted the Cockbrunnen, as well as many other brunnens between the Rhine and the Danube.[73]