VOL. I.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. gf 



them is limpid, bluish, lukewarm, and bubbling, containing sal-ammoniac, oker, 

 iron, vitriol, alum, sulphur, nitre, and orpiment,* used against epilepsies, dis- 

 eased spleens, and the worms ; the other is ice-cold, turbid, and whitish, much 

 stronger in taste, and heavier than the former, containing much orpiment, 

 salt, iron, nitre, and some sal-ammoniac, alum, and vitriol. All birds that drink 

 of the latter are observed to die ; which I have also made experiment of, by 

 taking some of it home, and giving it to poultry, after having eaten oats, barley 

 and bread-crums : For soon after drinking it, they became giddy, reeled and 

 tumbled upon their backs, with convulsions, and so died with their legs much 

 extended. Giving them common salt immediately after they had drunken, they 

 lived longer ; giving them vinegar, they died not at all, but seven or eight days 

 after were troubled with the pip. Those that died being opened, their lungs 

 were found quite shrivelled. Yet some persons who are troubled with worms, 

 taking a little quantity of it diluted with common water, have been observed by 

 this means to kill the worms in their bodies, and discharged great numbers oi 

 them : and though it makes them sick, yet not so as to endanger their lives. 



The third stream, lying lower than the other two, and about 20 paces distant 

 from them, is of a greenish colour, very clear^ and of a sourish sweet taste, 

 agreeable enough. Its weight is a medium between that of the other two; 

 whence it is probable that it is a mixture of both, meeting there together : To 

 confirm which, we mixed equal quantities of those two with a little common 

 well water, and found, on stirring them together, and permitting them to settle, 

 that they produced water of the same colour and taste as this third stream. 



» 



Of other uncommon Springs at Basil and in Alsace. N° 8, p. 134. 



At Basil there is a spring of a bluish colour, and somewhat troubled, hold- 

 ing copper, bitumen, and antimony ; about three parts of the first, one of the 

 second, and two of the last. The tanners water their skins in it ; and, being 

 a well-tasted and wholesome water, it is both much drunken, and used to 

 bathe in.-f- 



In the same town, which abounds with spring waters, there are two, among 

 the rest, called Bandulph's Well, and Brun Zum Brunnen, that are more 

 observable than the others, the former of them having a camphory and drying 



•* The chemical analysis of mineral waters was so imperfectly understood in the 17tii century, 

 Ihat little reliance can be placed on the number and proportion of ingredients assigned in this and 

 other instances. 



f If this water had really held copper and antimony in solution, it could not have been well-tasted j 

 much less could it have been a wholesome water. Antimony (we believe) has never yet been found 

 in any mineral water, and copper only in tlie streams which run from copper mines. 



