A crowd of agreeable associations attaches itself to the idea of sources and springs, for they are generally both pleasing and useful to man. How we long in summer for the refreshing waters of the cool fountain issuing from the mountain side, and murmuring through the woods. The lover of nature spends hours near some solitary spring, and forgets the flow of time, as he observes the bubbling and listens to the sweet music of its crystal waters. A luxuriant vegetation marks their progress, though all around be burnt up by the scorching sun. Along their margin many a wild flower blooms, and herbs and shrubs and trees rejoice in a more vivid green, and statelier growth. There also congregate such members of the finny race, as delight in cooler streams of untainted purity, and birds love to build their nests among the sheltering foliage. Thus a little world forms around the gushing spring, and shows on a diminutive scale, how all that lives and breathes depends upon the liquid element for its existence. While the waters filter through the earth they naturally dissolve a variety of substances, and all springs are more or less mixed with extraneous particles. But many of them, particularly such as are of a higher temperature and consequently arise from deeper strata, contain either a larger quantity or so peculiar a combination of mineral substances as to acquire medicinal virtues of the highest order, and to become objects of importance to a large portion of mankind. Numberless invalids annually flock to the hygeian fountains which nature unceasingly pours forth from her mysterious laboratory, and are by them restored to the enjoyments of a pleasurable existence. How truly wonderful is the chain of processes which first raises vapours from the deep, and eventually causes them to gush forth from the entrails of the earth, laden with blessings and enriched with treasures more inestimable than those the miner toils for!