[ 346 J 
XXYV. 
STUDIES IN THE CHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF FRESH AND 
SALT WATERS. ParrI. APPLICATIONS OF THE ABRA- 
TION METHOD OF ANALYSIS TO THE STUDY OF 
RIVER WATERS. By W. HK. ADENKEY,D. Sc., A. R.C.Sce.L., 
F.I.C., Curator, and Examiner in Chemistry, in the Royal 
University of Ireland, Dublin. 
[Read May 16; Received for Publication Juty 30; Published Szpremper 3, 1900.] 
I nave recently had occasion to make some careful studies of non- 
tidal and tidal river waters, and it has occurred to me that a brief 
record of some of my results may prove of value at the present 
time, when the best methods of analysis of polluted waters is still 
a subject of inquiry and discussion. 
Recent work upon this class of waters has all gone to emphasize 
the importance of distinguishing the unfermented organic matters 
from the fermented, and to estimate the proportion in which they 
exist, when present in a water. 
I communicated a paper’ to this Society some five years ago, in 
which I described a method of analysis, and the experimental investi- 
gation on which it was based, capable of effecting both these objects. 
Dr. George M‘Gowan has very appropriately termed it the 
*“* Aération Method,” and I propose to adopt this term. 
Tuer AERATION Meruop or ANALYSIS. 
Although I have published a detailed description of the 
method, it will, perhaps, prove convenient, if I give a brief 
outline of it here. The bottle in which the sample of water 
for analysis is collected ‘is completely filled and carefully stop- 
pered, so as to exclude every trace of air. The bottle is then 
conveyed to the laboratory without delay, and the sample is 
divided into two portions; the dissolved gases, and inorganic 
nitrogen compounds, are determined in one portion; the other 
portion is carefully preserved out of contact with air in the 
bottle into which it has been transferred, and which it com- 
!1Trans. R.D.S., N.S., vol. v., pt. xi., 1895. 
