BAD ODORS IN EESERVOIRED WATER. 469 



proof positive in regard to the good type of an imperial Roman. The 

 ideas could not have grown in an isolated way on uncongenial soil ; 

 there must have been other good, imperial Romans, and many of 

 them. He is a noble exemplar of his own age, and we learn through 

 him to respect his contemporaries. He is also interesting as a repre- 

 sentative man in a more extended sense. He combines the cool, un- 

 biased, intrepid spirit of modern scientific inquiry with the earnest 

 veneration of the moralist, and the speculative curiosity and audacity 

 of the metaphysician. To-day we find the scholars and poets a little 

 out of sympathy with the scientific men, and the men of science 

 declaring war against such doctors of orthodoxy as persist in stand- 

 ing aloof on (what they think) intrenched ground. 



Antoninus seems to be habitually clear from prejudice or super- 

 stition. When he makes a statement it is evident tliat he is giving 

 us his views as fully and freely as possible, without let or hinderance, 

 and this absence of partisanship constitutes the special charm that 

 seems destined to give a freeh perennial interest to his monograph. 

 The subjects he touches on are of universal value to all human beings 

 when in a thoughtful mood, and it seems very doubtful whether his 

 pure and forcible statements will ever lose their power, because they 

 have been from the outset so thoroughly refined from all dross in the 

 literary method of their presentation that it is hardly possible to 

 conceive of any advance in culture that will leave them behind the 

 age in this respect. 







BAD ODORS m RESERYOIRED DRINKING-WATER.^ 



Feom Professor S. A. LATTIMOEE'S Eeport. 



THE citizens of Rochester were much inclined to congratulate 

 themselves and certainly on excellent grounds when they 

 had brought water thirty miles from the crystal depths of Hemlock 

 Lake for the use of the city. But last year, to the astonishment and 

 disgust of the people, their water became so offensive as to give rise 

 to grave apprehensions respecting its effect on public health. In 

 October it suddenly began to emit a peculiar fish-like odor, which 

 continued until the following December. It was a very natural sug- 

 gestion that tliis odor must be due to the presence of fish, which had 

 somehow found their way from the lake into the main pipes, and 

 thence into the smaller service-pipes, where their progress had been 

 arrested, and tliey were undergoing slow decomposition. It is well 

 known to those familiar with the experience of other large cities, that 



' Abstract of a Report to the Executive Board of the City of Rochester, N. Y., on 

 the Recent Peculiar Condition of the Hemlock Lake Water-Supply. By S. A. Lattimorej 

 Ph. D., LL. D., Professor of Chemistry in the University of Rochester. 



