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162 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



time prior to that, no doubt a very long time. There is much 

 natural escape and there are too many outlets to allow us to be- 

 lieve that the original supply, however large, could have withstood 

 such a steady drain on its resources. We are rather forced to 

 the belief that we are dealing with a great, underground water 

 circulation in natural equilibrium, inflow and outflow being equal, 

 and that the rate of natural outflow measures for us the rate of 

 manufacture and of inflow. If this be true, there is not the same 

 danger of exhaustion of the supply that there would be in the 

 other case. But this is a very different thing from saying that 

 the supply is unlimited and can be drawn on indefinitely at a rate 

 much in excess of the normal circulation. 



The origin of the water. Any discussion of this problem must 

 of necessity be almost wholly theoretical. Our lack of definite 

 knowledge of too many of the factors is too great to permit it to ^ 

 be otherwise. We refer to it at all here only because Professor 

 Kemp has exhaustivdy discussed the problem in Bulletin 159, and 

 because we wish briefly to consider one or two points made in that 

 discussion. A brief synopsis of his argument must precede. ' 



Kemp gives a very exhaustive discussion of the composition of M j 

 the Saratoga waters. Omitting minor constituents, they are char- ' 

 acterized by high content of chlorids and bicarbonates of sodium, 1 

 calcium and magnesium, high content of uncombined carbon dioxid, ] 

 and extremely small content of sulphates. He distinguishes three 

 divisions of underground water from the standpoint of origin, 

 meteoric waters derived from the rainfall, magmatic waters de- 

 rived from cooling igneous rocks, and connate waters, generally 

 marine waters buried in the rocks at the time of deposit and re- 

 tained in them. Then by a process of elimination he rules out 

 connate waters as a possible contributing source for the Saratoga 

 waters, in whole or part, because they lack sulphates in solution. 

 He dismisses meteoric waters as a possible source of the carbon 

 dioxid and the chlorids, because we know of no chemical method 

 by which they might be produced in such waters in the Saratoga 

 region ; and he finally concludes that these constituents are there- 

 fore likely of magmatic origin. His summing up is as follows : 



The explanation which appeals most strongly to the writer is that the 

 carbonic acid gas, the chlorids, bromids, iodids, fluorids and sodium car- 

 bonate are deep-seated. The sodium carbonate might in part or in whole 

 be dissolved from the feldspars in the old crystalline rocks. The carbonated | 

 waters take on calcium and magnesium carbonates from the limestones ] 

 encountered in their upward journey, more especially from the Little Falls 

 dolomite. 





