button to main menu  Gents Mag 1794 p.113

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Gentleman's Magazine 1794 p.113
subside, and form the incrustation in question; which incloses sticks, dead moss and straws cementing them into masses, vulgarly, but improperly, called petrifactions; for, the substance here alluded to is a calcareous tophus. Water thus charged with lime has a brisker taste than what has been rendered soft by exposure to the atmosphere in the river, and generally is preferred for culinary purposes; which seems to invalidate an opinion, entertained by very able physicians, of particular obstructions being occasioned by stony particles received into the system, together with the fluid in question; but this beverage, so suspicious in appearance, is innocent in its effects; for, the stone and gravel are, at least, as uncommon here as in any part of the kingdom, nor do we perceive the smallest symptom of those unseemly tumours of the throat which prevail in the Alps and other mountainous districts.
Before quitting the park, we came to high-water mark; for, the tides reach thus far into the country at the time of spring-floods, the distance from the sea being not less than twenty miles; consequently this part of the river is not more than eighteen or twenty yards above low-water mark, which is a very gentle ascent when compared with that we had been examining; for, the Kent falls nearly fifty yards, by means of streams and cascades, in the space of less than five miles between Kendal and Levens. The watery inhabitants of this limpid current may be thus enumerated: the fresh-water muscle, Mytilus Cygneus; the cray-fish, Cancer Astacus; the samlet, Salmo; the trout, S. Fario; the salmon, S. Salar; the eel, Muraena Anguilla; the bull-head, Costus Gobio; the pink, Cyprinus Phoxinus; the loach, Cobitis Toenia. About high-water-mark are found the flounder, Pleuronectes Flessius; and the smelt, Salmo Eperlanus. The otter may be added, without much impropriety, to the catalogue, the common enemy of the finny tribe.
(To be concluded in a future number.)
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