130 CHEMISTRY OF NATURAL WATERS. [IX. 



this kind which occur in regions where volcanic agencies are 

 evidently active, the only ones hitherto studied are those of 

 Xew York and western Canada, which issue from almost 

 horizontal Silurian rocks (31). The first account of these 

 remarkable waters was given in the Amer. Jour. Sci. in 1829 

 (Vol. XV. p. 238), by the kte Professor Eaton, who described 

 two acid springs in Byron, Genesee County, X. Y. ; one yield- 

 ing a stream of distinctly acid water sufficient to turn a mill- 

 wheel, and the other affording in smaller quantities a much 

 more acid water. The latter was afterwards examined by Dr. 

 Lewis Beck (Mineralogy of New York, p. 150). He found it 

 to be colorless, transparent, and intensely acid, with a specific 

 gravity of 1.113; which corresponds to a solution holding 

 seventeen per cent of oil of vitriol. No chlorides, and only 

 traces of lime and iron, were found in this water, which was 

 nearly pure dilute sulphuric acid. Professor Hall (Geology of 

 New York, 4th District, p. 134) has noticed, in addition to 

 these, several other springs and wells of acid water in the 

 adjacent town of Bergen. Farther westward, in the town of 

 Alabama, is a similar water, whose analysis by Erni and Craw 

 will be found in the Amer. Jour. Sci. (2), IX. 450. It con- 

 tained in 1,000 parts about 2.5 of sulphuric acid, and 4.6 parts 

 of sulphates, chiefly of lime, magnesia, iron, and alumina. In 

 this, as in the succeeding analyses, hydrated sulphuric acid, 

 S0 3 ,HO, is meant. 



The earliest quantitative analyses of any of these waters 

 were those by Croft and myself of a spring at Tuscarora, in 

 1845 and 1847, of which the detailed results appear in the 

 Amer. Jour. Sci. (2), VIII. 364. This, at the time of my 

 analysis in September, 1847, contained, in 1,000 parts, 4.29 of 

 sulphuric acid, and only 1.87 of sulphates ; while the previous 

 analysis by Professor Croft gave approximatively 3.00 of neutral 

 sulphates, and only about 1.37 of sulphuric acid. Similar 

 acid waters occur on Grand Island above Niagara Falls and at 

 Chippewa. 



All of these springs, along a line of more than 100 miles 

 from east to west, rise from the outcrop of the Onondaga salt- 



