a town and bishop's see of Turkey in Europe, situated on the coast of the Archipelago. Long. 25. 20. E. Lat. 40. 58. N.

ASPERMOUS (a, priv., and σπερμα), in Botany, destitute of seed.

ASPHALTIC Pavement. See BITUMEN.

ASPHALTITES Lacus, or Lake of Bitumen, so called from the bitumen which floats upon its surface. It is more familiarly known as the Dead Sea, a name associated with many fables, and derived from a long standing belief that no creature could live in its waters, or within reach of its pes- This celebrated lake is supposed to occupy the site of the ancient plain of Sodom and Gomorrah; and this belief may possibly have given rise to the idea of its deadly exhalation. It is, indeed, possible that when the volcanic agencies that appear to have torn and upheaved its rocky southern borders were in operation, such emanations may have taken place, but these have long ceased. Early in the Christian era Pliny merely states that the Essenes, a tribe dwelling on its banks, abandoned their stations on the approach of summer as unwholesome; just as other lakes in warm climates are pestilential at that season from marsh miasms. In the present day the air over it has nothing peculiarly pestilential. It has been repeatedly visited, and the supposed absence of animal life on and in its water is found to be fabulous. Heymann and Van Egmont observed swallows skimming along its surface; and a sparrow, which they had thrown into the lake after clipping its wings, easily regained the shore. Captain Lynch of the U.S. navy, saw ducks on its surface, and snipes, partridges, singing birds, and hares, on its shores. Some travellers have ascertained that the coral porites elongata lives in its waters; and Hasselquist and Maundrell long ago mentioned living shells as occurring in it. Dr Wilson observed shells of dead Clausilla and Pupa on its shores, which he supposes to have been carried into it by the Jordan, but may very well have lived there and been ejected after death on the beach. It has even been asserted that one small species of fish is peculiar to the Dead Sea. This designation of the lake seems to have arisen from the little agitation of its very dense waters by the winds, and the dull murmur they make on its shores. Its surface very speedily resumes its unruffled appearance on the ceasing of a gale, and is scarcely curled by a moderate breeze.

The lake occupies a portion of a very remarkable depression of the earth's surface, the Wady-el-Ghoo. Within the present century its surface has been found to be greatly below the level of the Mediterranean. The problem was attempted by Schubart and Russeggar with the barometer; but it was more accurately determined by a series of levels taken by some French engineers, and by Lieut. Symonds of our Royal Engineers. The levels of the latter, carried from Jaffa to the Dead Sea, give the depression of the surface of the latter at 1312 feet. The French state it at 1446 feet below the Mediterranean, and 1407 below the Red Sea. The determination of Captain Lynch, U.S. navy, nearly agrees with that of Symonds. Three attempts have been made to survey it by boats; the first by Mr Costigan, an enterprising young Irish traveller in 1835; the next by Lieut. Molyneux, R.N., in 1847. Exposure to the sun proved fatal to both. In 1848, Captain Lynch was sent with iron boats and suitable apparatus by the American Government to survey the Dead Sea, and the result has been published. The lake is stated by Symonds to be 48½ English miles in length, and 11½ at its greatest breadth. Lynch makes its extreme length to be 42 miles from north to south, and rather less than 10 at its widest part. These measurements are much below its fancied dimensions. Even Mariti states its circumference at 180 miles. Its depth is very considerable. The greatest depth, according to the observations of Molyneux, is 225 fathoms; and even then it was uncertain whether the plummet struck the bottom. In the northern portion, between Ain-Sidi to the mouth of the Arnon, the mean depth, according to Lynch, for a distance of seven geographical miles, was 188 fathoms. The southern portion of the lake is shallow, and is divided from the deep part by a narrow peninsula of loose calcareous marl. To the south of this peninsula the depth is only about 13 feet. With regard to the bottom of the lake, it is in part rocky, but generally consists of a bluish mud or slime, containing cubic crystals of salt. Bitumen and asphalt are found on the east and west shores of the lake, with small masses of sulphur, especially at the end of the peninsula which Lynch has named Cape Costigan, a bluff 40 or 50 feet high, with an angular ridge 20 feet higher. The sulphur is occasionally in masses as large as a walnut, and the asphalt is manufactured into rosaries at Jerusalem. The north shores of the lake Lynch describes as an extensive flat of mud, with sandy plains beyond, and as the very type of desolation, with the blackened trunks and branches of trees strewn in every direction, partially encrusted with salt. The north-west shore consists of a bed of gravel sloping gently to the hills. The eastern shores are formed by the rugged sterile mountains of Moab, a branch of the Hauran range. The southern shore is low, flat, and marshy, of the most desolate aspect. The whole line of the west coast is formed of a range of rugged mountains like the eastern side. At the south-west extremity of the lake is the isolated ridge called the Mountain of Usdolm, containing fossil salt. Here Lynch found a lofty detached pillar of salt, standing at the head of a deep narrow chasm. It is cylindrical in front, and pyramidal behind; it is of solid crystalline salt, capped by carbonate of lime. The upper part is 40 feet high, resting on an oval pedestal 40 or 50 feet above the water. It slightly diminishes in diameter as it ascends, and the top is of crumbling limestone. It is probably this pillar of salt which some travellers have mentioned as known to the Arabs under the name of "Lot's Wife."

Captain Lynch's survey was leisurely made; his boats were 22 days on the lake. He encountered a sudden squall on one occasion, when the sound of the waves against the boats is described as like that of sledge hammers rather than of waves of the sea; yet when the squall as suddenly ceased, within 20 minutes they were rowing along a placid sheet of smooth water scarcely rippling to the breeze. This comparative sluggishness of its waters is owing to their great density, which has no parallel except in the lately discovered Utah Lake of North America. Lynch once observed the sea extremely phosphorescent; which appearance we now believe to be produced by medusaria and other minute animals—a further proof that the waters of this celebrated lake are not hostile to life. The water, when examined in a glass, is clear and transparent; but Molyneux found it throughout at the period of his visit mouldy like the waters of the Jordan; and he also speaks of its disagreeable smell. It has been chemically examined by Macquer, Lavoisier, Sage, Marce, Klaproth, and last by Dr Salisbury of America. Its specific gravity as given by Lavoisier = 1·240; by Klaproth, 1·24; by Marce, 1·211; by Salisbury, 1·1877. These differences may depend on the season of the year, and the proximity to the Jordan or the Arnon. Certain it is that its waters are far more buoyant than those of the Mediterranean. The ancients believed that men and animals, and even iron, floated entirely on its surface. Mr Stephens, a late American traveller, states that when he made the experiment, lying on his back without any motion of his hands, half his body remained above the surface, and he could easily have read in that position; although in the Mediterranean he could only float when using some slight motion of his hands.

The analysis of the water has been differently stated by eminent chemists; thus we have for its contents—

| Substance | Marce. | Klaproth. | |--------------------|--------|-----------| | Muriate of lime | 3·920 | 10·60 | | Muriate of magnesia| 10·246 | 24·20 | | Muriate of soda | 10·360 | 7·80 | | Sulphate of lime | 0·054 | 0·00 | | Water | 24·580 | 42·60 | | | 75·420 | 57·40 |

This striking difference probably depends on two causes: Asphaltum the loss of some water by evaporation in the keeping of the specimen of water before analysis; and the difference in drying the salts before weighing them. That this last cause is very important we know; and Marcell found that when the saline ingredients were dried only at a temperature of 180° Fahr., they equalled 41 per cent. of the water examined.

The analysis given by Dr Salisbury in the Transactions of the American Scientific Association for 1851, gives also minute quantities of potass, bromine, sulphur, silica, alumina, peroxide of iron with nitric, phosphoric, and carbonic acid, and organic matter, as ingredients in the waters of the Dead Sea; and no doubt he would also have found in them iodine, but his method of stating the proportions of each, while the bases of the other salts only are given, renders quantitative comparison unsatisfactory. He, however, states the ponderable contents of the water at 23:02 per cent. He further states that a gallon weighed 11:877 lb.; a cubic foot 71:175 lb., while that of distilled water only 62:32 lb.

The saltness of the lake is derived from extensive beds of salt that occur on its shores. At Usdom these beds extend five geographic miles in length, and form cliffs from 100 to 150 feet in thickness. The waters of the Jordan, though potable, contain exactly the same kind of saline substances as the lake; and as it has no outlet, the supply brought by the Jordan, the Arnon, and its other tributaries, must be removed by evaporation, leaving the salt behind; so that in process of time the lake may become a bed of fossil salt. The rugged mountains of Moab have all the character of erupted rocks; and the sulphur and bitumen, with the large disengagement of bubbles of gas from the deepest part of the lake, are probably indications of slumbering volcanic action.