€0 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Yol. X. 



members of the Society who may attend the Cincinnati meeting 

 of the Association, be requested to act as a delegation to promote 

 the acceptance of the invitation tendered hist August to the 

 Association to meet in this city, and] that the delegates be in- 

 structed to request that the meeting be held in the last week of 

 August, 1882. 



It was also agreed that so soon as the acceptance of an invit- 

 ation is secured, lists shall be prepared of names of gentlemen 

 to be invited, and that in the meantime the committee would 

 make suggestions of names, and also of those who should be 



CO / 



solicited to subscribe to a guarantee fund towards the expenses 

 of the meeting, and to become members of the local committee. 



It was understood that in the event of the acceptance of the 

 invitation, the McGill University -should be requested to allow 

 the use of its hall and class rooms for the meetin2;s and the 

 lectures. 



Dr. J. Baker Edwards read a paper entitled ''Notes on 

 dangerous Well-waters." Preferring to the water supply of 

 Lennoxville College, he said that a well being wholesome at one 

 season was no reason for it always being so ; it would make a 

 material difiFerence in the quality whether the well was two or 

 eighteen feet deep ; that the condition of a well which was regu- 

 larly being filled by ample water rushes was totally different from 

 that which would obtain during a winter frost. Therefore the 

 sample of water he obtained from the well in August last might be 

 totally different from that obtained from the same well by Prof. 

 Croft of Toronto, in the depth of winter, and their difference was a 

 difference of opinion only, not a difference of fact. His verdict 

 was that the water w^as perfectly wholesome, that of Prof. Croft, 

 that it was critical if not dangerous. Had the circumstances 

 been the same it was possible no difference of opinion would have 

 appeared. He than gave a detailed account of his analysis in 

 August, 1880, and a description of the process employed, justi- 

 fying his analysis of that date, and his opinion that the water 

 was free from organic impurities, and especially sewage contamin- 

 ation. Speaking of disease arising from bad water, he said that 

 the malaria affecting country districts seldom arose from the 

 filtered water of wells, but rather from open meadows, marshes 

 and inconstant streams. To a large extent the safety of a water 

 supply depended on its recent filtration rather than on its source. 

 He gave an account of the different kinds of well water and of 

 the condition necessary to make the water wholesome. 



