164 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [June 



first sought for the manufacture of salt, is now much used for 

 medicinal purposes. Its strength seems subject to some variation, 

 since a specimen from the same well in December 1861 gave 

 me. by a partial analysis, chlorid of sodium 23.00, chlorid of cal- 

 cium 9.66, chlorid of magnesium 2.40, sulphate of lime 1.75; = 

 36.81 parts in 1000. No. 6, examined at the same time, is 

 from a second well sunk in 1861, not far from the last. 



7, 8. — These are analyses of the waters from two borings in 

 the Trenton limestone at Morton's distillery in Kingston. The 

 analyses are by Dr. Williamson of Queen's College in that city, 

 and were made probably ten or twelve years since. They have 

 been recalculated so as to represent the whole of the sulphuric 

 acid as combined with calcium. The first of these waters gave 

 to Dr. Williamson both bromine and iodine, and the second was 

 found to be sulphurous. These waters differ from the preceding 

 in containing considerable amounts of earthy carbonates, and in 

 this respect are related to those of the second class, while they still 

 show a large predominance of earthy chlorids. 



g 37. The waters of the above table contain, besides chlorid of 

 sodium and a little chlorid of potassium, large quantities of the 

 •chlorids of calcium and magnesium, amounting together, in several 

 cases, to more than one half the solid contents of the water. Sul- 

 phates are either absent, or occur only in small quantities, and the 

 same is true of earthy carbonates. Salts of baryta and strontia 

 are sometimes present, while the proportions of bromids and 

 iodids, though variable, are often considerable. 



In the large amount of magnesian chlorid which they contain, 

 these waters resemble the bittern or mother-liquor which remains 

 after the greater part of the chlorid of sodium has been removed 

 from sea-water by evaporation. The bitterns from modern seas, 

 however differ in the presence of sulphates, and in containing, when 

 sufficiently concentrated, only traces of lime. The reason of this, 

 as already pointed out in § 22, is to be found in the fact that 

 in the waters of the present ocean the sulphates are much more 

 than equivalent to the lime, so that this base separates during 

 evaporation as gypsum.* But as shown in § 23 and § 24, 

 the waters of the ancient seas, which held in the form of chlorid of 

 calcium the greater part of the lime since deposited as carbonate, 

 must have yielded by evaporation bitterns containing a large 

 proportion of chlorid of calcium. Such is the nature of the 



* See farther on this point, Bischof, Chem. Geology, i, 413. 



