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XXXII. Chemical Examination of certain Lakes and Springs on 

 the Turko-Persian frontier near Mount Ararat. By Henry 

 M. Witt, F.C.S., Assistant Chemist to the Government School 

 of Science applied to Mining and the Arts^. 



THE samples of these waters were brought over by William 

 Keunett Loftus, Esq., F.G.S., and collected by him during 

 the progress of a joint Commission appointed by the English, 

 Russian, Turkish, and Persian Governments for the demarcation 

 of the Turko-Persian frontier ; they were placed in my hands for 

 chemical examination in June last by Sir Roderick Murchison. 



Unfortunately the samples were so small, only a wine quart 

 bottle of each, that a complete chemical analysis was impossible, 

 but the few experiments which I have been able to make suffice 

 to show the interesting character of these lakes and springs. 



Lake of Urumia. 



Probably the most interesting is the Lake of Urumia, which 

 Mr. Loftus states t to be " about 82 miles in length and 24 wide, 

 its height being 4100 feet above the level of the sea. The water 

 is of a deep azure colour, but there is something exceedingly 

 unnatural in its heavy stillness and want of life. Small frag- 

 ments of Fuci, saturated with salt, and thrown ashore, form a ridge 

 at the margin of the lake, and emit such a noxious effluvium 

 under a hot sun as to produce nausea at the stomach. The 

 sulphuretted hydrogen generated from the lake itself without 

 doubt adds to this sensation. The water is intensely salt, and 

 evaporates so rapidly, that a man, who swam in to bring me a 

 bottle of the water for analysis, on coming out was covered with 

 particles of salt, and looked as white and ludicrous as though he 

 had been thrown into a flour tub." 



The sample was collected from the lake at Guverjin Kalah, 

 on the north-western shore, on the 14th of August, 1852, the 

 temperature of the water at the time being 78° P. at 11 a.m. 



As I received it (the cork having been well secured by a coat- 

 ing of wax), the water still retained a strong smell of sulphuretted 

 hydrogen, and was moreover supersatm'ated with carbonic acid, 

 which it evolved on being shaken or gently heated. It was evi- 

 dently a very strong brine, for it tasted intensely of common 

 salt, left on every place on which a drop evaporated spontane- 

 ously a large quantity of saline residue ; and by leaving a por- 

 tion of it for a few hours in a warm laboratory in an open dish, 

 large cubical crystals, exhibiting the peculiar step-like cavernous 

 structure of connnon salt, separated in abundance. 



* Coniniiiiiicated by the Author. 



t On the Gcolofiy of portions of the Turko-Persian Frontier, by W. K. 

 Loftus, Esq. (Communicated to the Geological Society from the Foreign 

 Otticc, by order of the Farl of Clarendon ; and i)ublishcd in the Quarterly 

 Journal of the Society, vol. xi. p. 247) 



