48 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



comparisons is that the mineral waters, especially in Saratoga 

 Springs village, have greatly declined in strength in the last thirty 

 years. 



By way of contrast two analyses are given of the Franklin 

 Artesian water of Ballston Spa (discovered 1867), one made in 

 1869 and the other at least 35 years later in the Department of 

 Agriculture, Washington. There is no appreciable change. The 

 water comes from much greater depth than the Saratoga wells and 

 far fewer wells have been drilled in Ballston. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE MINERAL WATERS 

 The previous pages place before a reader the geological and 

 chemical facts about the springs upon which, aided by experience 

 gained elsewhere, the scientific explanations of their origin must be 

 based. This interesting question did not fail to attract the attention 

 of early observers. Dr J. H. Steel, to whom we owe so much of 

 valuable record, was alive to the difficulties of the problem. On 

 page 202 of the second edition (1838) of his book which was first 

 published in 1817, he states in closing: ''Much interest has been 

 excited on the subject of the source of these singular and interesting 

 waters, but no researches have as yet satisfactorily unfolded the 

 mystery. The large proportion of common salt found among their 

 constituent properties may be accounted for without much difficulty, 

 all the salt springs of Europe as well as those of America being 

 found in geological situations exactly corresponding to these,^ but 

 the production of the unexampled quantity of carbonic acid gas, and 

 the medium through which the other articles are principally retained 

 in solution, is yet and probably will remain a subject of mere specu- 

 lation. The low and regular temperature of the water seems to 

 forbid the idea that it is the effect of subterranean heat, as many 

 have supposed, and the total absence of any mineral acid excepting 

 the marine- which is combined with soda, does away with the possi- 

 bility of its being the efifect of any combination of that kind. Its 

 production is therefore truly unaccountable." 



1 Our more complete geological knowledge today would hardly justify 

 us in admitting this sweeping statement. 



2 There are now known small amounts of sulfuric and nitric, but in 

 the large way Doctor Steel's statement is true. It is reported that 

 Doctor Steel was instrumental in organizing a company (in the decade 

 of the twenties) to bore for salt deposits on the evidence of the springs, 

 but that after drilling no feet the enterprise was abandoned. 



