184 Miscellanies, 



not the other. Acetic acid is the only acid among the many that I tried, 

 which answered this end. If a small quantity of dilute acetic acid (com- 

 mon acetic acid, diluted with five times its weight of water, was used) be 

 poured upon the precipitate produced in the case of strontia, it will be 

 completely dissolved ; whereas no impression is made on that from the 

 salts of baryta. 



Acetic acid, so concentrated as to crystallize when its temperature was 

 below 50°, was poured on the precipitated chromate of baryta, and a por- 

 tion of it was taken up, but in no instance did any quantity of the acid dis- 

 solve the entire precipitate. 



With the above means, there need not now remain the least doubt in 

 ascertaining promptly, the presence of baryta in a salt of strontia sup- 

 posed to contain it ; for all that is necessary to be done, is to add to a so- 

 lution of the salt, a solution of chromate of potassa, which, if baryta be 

 present, will produce a light yellow precipitate insoluble in acetic acid. 



This reagent will also serve to distinguish baryta from lime. 



8. Frozen Wells. 



To Professor Silltman, — Dear Sir, — There is a well near this vil- 

 laffe, which has drawn the attention of the scientific and curious for many, 

 years, but the phenomena which happen in it, have never yet been ex- 

 plained. I have taken some pains to ascertain the facts, and now com- 

 municate them to you, in hopes of hearing a scientific exposition of this 

 apparent contradiction of nature's laws. 



The well is excavated on a table of land, elevated about thirty feet 

 above the bed of the Susquehanna River, and distant from it three-fourths 

 of a mile. The depth of the well, from the surface to the bottom, is said 

 to be seventy-seven feet ; but for four or five months in the year, the sur- 

 face of the water is frozen so solid as to be entirely useless to the inhab- 

 itants. On the twenty-third of the present month, in company with a 

 friend, I measured the depth and found it to be sixty-one feet from the 

 surface of the earth, to the ice which covers the water in the well, and 

 this ice we found it impossible to break with a heavy iron weight attached 

 to a rope. The sides of the well are nearly covered with masses of ice, 

 which increasing in the descent, leave but about a foot space (in diam- 

 eter) at the bottom. A thermometer let down to the bottom, sunk 38° 

 in fifteen minutes, being 68° in the sun, and 30° at the bottom of the 

 well. The well has been dug twenty-one years, and I am informed by a 

 very credible person, who assisted in the excavation, that a man could not 

 endure to work in it more than two hours at a time, even with extra clothing, 

 although in the month of June, and the weather excessively hot. The 

 ice remains until very late in the season, and is often drawn up in the 

 months of June and July. Samuel Mathews drew from the well a large 

 piece of ice on the 25th day of July, lfc37, and it is common to find 

 it there on the 4th of July. 



