PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 



I. On the Quantity and Quality of the Gases disengaged from the Thermal Spring which 

 supplies the King's Bath in the City of Bath. By Charles Daubeny, M.D. 

 F.R.S., Professor of Chemistry in the University of Oxford. 



Received November 2, — Read December 19, 1833. 



In some remarks on a paper of Dr. John Davy's, entitled " Notice on the Remains 

 of the recent Volcano in the Mediterranean," which were inserted in the last Part of 

 our Transactions, I expressed my regret, that no accurate statement of the quantity 

 of gas evolved in a given time from any thermal waters had been published, and inti- 

 mated my intention to make this the subject of special examination, whenever suitable 

 opportunities should occur. 



Accordingly, having in my former visits to Bath been struck with the copious evo- 

 lution of gas from the centre of the principal of the hot springs of that city, I solicited 

 from the gentlemen composing the Committee appointed to manage and regulate 

 them, leave to institute such experiments as appeared to me desirable on the spot ; 

 and having obtained from them the requisite facilities for so doing, I determined to 

 collect and measure the gas evolved, repeatedly, during a period sufficiently extended 

 to enable me to fix with tolerable precision its average amount, and to ascertain, 

 whether any greater diurnal variation in its quantity could be detected, than what 

 might be fairly set down to errors of manipulation, or to oscillations in the quantities 

 discharged extending over a wider range of time, than that during which it might be 

 found convenient to protract the period of each observation. 



Anticipating, also, that a variation might be discovered, I carried on during the 

 same period a corresponding register of the leading conditions of the atmosphere as 

 to pressure, temperature and humidity, in order to learn, whether any connexion could 

 be traced between these and the quantities of gas evolved. 



1 likewise examined, on several occasions, the quality of the gas emitted, not only 

 in order to fix with greater exactness its actual composition, but likewise to learn, 

 whether any variation in these respects could be perceived during the course of my 

 observations. 



The Bath waters arise from three distinct sources, or springs, contiguous to each 



MDCCCXXXIV. B 



