OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 63 



tion, public sentiment continued strongly in favor of this kind of pipes ; 

 and until about the commencement of the present century no experi- 

 mental examination of the subject had been undertaken. Dr. Lamb of 

 England, and later Guyton Morveau of France, devoted their attention 

 for a time to this inquiry. Their opinions illustrate the uncertainty 

 which attends the earlier labors in every field of investigation. The 

 one believed that most, if not all, spring waters possess the property 

 of acting upon lead to such an extent as to render their conveyance 

 through leaden tubes unsafe, and this because of the salts in solution ; 

 — the other, that many natural waters scarcely act on lead at all, and 

 because of the salts in solution. The former believed that rain or 

 snow water (eminently pure) does not corrode lead ; the latter, that dis- 

 tilled water, the purest of all waters, acts rapidly on it. Dr. Thomp- 

 son of Glasgow subsequently gave some consideration to the subject, 

 and came to the conclusion, that, though Dr. Lamb's general proposi- 

 tion was true, the lead was not dissolved, but suspended merely. Such 

 was the doubt upon this point, — the insolubility of oxide of lead, — 

 that a scientific association in Germany made it a prize problem. The 

 honor of deciding the question was accredited to Brendecke, whose 

 views were coincided in by his unsuccessful competitor, Siebold,* and 

 also by Herberger, who prepared his oxide of lead in a different man- 

 ner, and reported his results at a later period. They decided that ox- 

 ide of lead is insoluble in water. 



" The imperfection of the investigation and the injustice of this award 

 have since been established by the labors of Yorke,! and Bonsdorff, | 

 who have found that aerated, distilled water, deprived of carbonic acid, 

 oxidates metallic lead and dissolves the oxide in the proportion of from 

 TTrVirth to TU^iTTTth. Even the acute Scheele had remarked the same 

 fact in the last century. Philips denied the accuracy of the conclu- 

 sions of both Yorke and Bonsdorff, and maintained, with Thompson, 

 that the oxide of lead was not soluble, but was only in suspension. 

 His view was supported by the fact, that filtration seemed to separate 

 the lead from the water that originally contained it. In 1846 Yorke § 

 reviewed the investigation of Philips, and showed that, in filtration, the 

 oxide of lead enters into combination with the woody fibre of the filter- 



* Phar. Cent. BlatL, 1835, p. 831 ; Buck. Rep., Ill , pp. 155-179. 

 t Pogg. Jinn., XXXIII., pp. 110 -112. 



t Phar. Cent. Blatt., 1836, p. 520; Buck. Rep., V., pp. 55-59. 

 § Phil. Mag., XXVIII., pp. 17 - 20. 



