Extract

The accurate analysis of a mineral water, although attended with considerable difficulty and labour, muft be allowed, in a general point of view, to be an object of so little importance, that unless there be some interesting medical question to investigate, or some new analytical methods to point out in the course of the inquiry, it may be questioned whether researches of this kind are worth the time and attention which they require, or deserve to be placed amongst the records of natural science.

Having thought it necessary, in the present essay, to confine myself to the natural and chemical history of the spring in question, without any digression upon its medicinal qualities, and being well aware that chemical details are considered by geologists merely as collateral objects, some apology may be required for the length of this communication. But if the relation which the history of mineral waters bears to geological and mineralogical inquiries, and the peculiarities of composition for which this spring is remarkable, entitle the subject to the attention of this Society, I hope that the general views and investigations which I have occasionally introduced respecting the analysis of mineral waters, and the composition of several salts connected with this inquiry, will be deemed a sufficient excuse for having thus expanded an account from which they were almost inseparable.

It is about two years since my attention was directed to this chaly­beate spring by Dr. Saunders, to whom in consequence of his valuable treatise on mineral waters,