It is remarkable that sheep, cows, and other animals, crowd to drink this water with great eagerness, and even to lick the stones and sides of the channel through which it flows. Their partiality for it is so great that, at certain times, they are known to swim across the river Allier, in considerable numbers together, without even tasting of that water, and to proceed, without interruption onward, until they reach this their favourite beverage. 288. _CARLSBAD WATER is hot, saline, and chalybeate, having an unpleasant alkaline and bitter taste, though scarcely any smell. Its constant temperature is 165°. It contains chalk, Glauber’s salt (203), common salt, and carbonat of soda (201), together with a small portion of iron; and carbonic acid gas, or fixed air (26), in considerable quantity._ The town of Carlsbad, situated on the river Eger, in Bohemia, and its springs (which have the name of _Caroline baths_), received their appellation from the Emperor Charles the Fourth, who is said to have himself discovered the latter, in the year 1370, whilst hunting; and, since that period, few waters have more engaged the attention of chemists and physicians than these. Carlsbad is now much frequented during the summer months, and has good accommodations as a watering place. Its water is remarkable for a rapid and copious deposition of calcareous earth, which takes place always on cooling, and forms a very hard and beautiful crust on the inner surface or tube of any channel through which it flows; and forms petrifactions round moss, pieces of straw, or other extraneous substances which are put into the stream, even for so short a time as twenty─four hours. All the iron which the fresh water contains is also precipitated by cooling, and rather sooner than the calcareous earth. A very fine laminated calcareous stone in variegated colours is thus formed in large masses around the channel of the stream, which, when polished, is almost equal in beauty to jasper. Of the hot springs of this neighbourhood the principal is called the _Sprudel_. It boils up, with great violence, and discharges about 352 cubic feet of water hourly, through a curious natural vault or incrustation which it has gradually formed. This water supplies the greater number of the baths. The other springs are, in general, of much lower temperature: they do not exceed from 114° to 125°, and they differ somewhat from each other in their chemical properties. They all contain a large portion of carbonic acid gas, or fixed air, and this is given out in such quantity by the water, that it fills several caverns, in the rocks adjoining to the springs, rendering them fatal to all animals which incautiously enter them.