371 



It follows from what is here stated that every particle of 

 water is almost continuously exposed to the atmosphere. It 

 comes down as rain or snow, it oozes through at most 3 feet 

 of loose earth, very often devoid of organic life, and then runs 

 and fails in shallow streams into the sea. Considering this, 

 one might reasonably expect that the tension of the carbonic 

 acid in these waters would be equal to that of the atmo- 

 sphere, and it is a little surprising to find that this is far from 

 being the case. 



As already mentioned (p. 337) the quantities of carbonic 

 acid present in the air of Disko were extremely high: 4, 5 or 

 even 6 tenthousand-parts. The tension of the river-water was 

 alw^ays far below that. Instead of citing the whole series of 

 my analyses I prefer to give some typical examples: 



1. In a spring coming out of a terrace near the sea and 

 showing a temperature of 3.1° the tension at the source was 

 found = 0. 



2. In a glacier-river rushing down a thousand feet, mostly 

 as foam and dust, a tension of 2.5 was found. The temperature 

 was 7.1°. 



3. It often happens in calm weather that the freshwater 

 from a glacier-river spreads out over the surface of the sea in 

 a very thin layer, easily distinguishable by its colour and 

 opaqueness and sometimes stretching several miles out. In 

 such a layer of perfectly fresh water I once examined the 

 tension of carbonic acid and found it by two analyses 2.5 — 3 

 while, at the same time, the tension of the atmosphere was 

 found = 6.5—7. 



It cannot be doubted that the water under the circumstances 

 obtaining in examples 2 and 3 must absorb large quantities of 

 carbonic acid from the atmosphere. But why does not the 

 tension rise higher? 



Only one explanation is possible. The carbonic acid 

 absorbed must be chemically combined with some substance in 



24* 



