1866.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 225 



some. It was this that had driven the Romans to bring water 

 from the hills of the Campagna. It was this that had led the citizens 

 of New York to conduct the river Croton from a distance of forty- 

 miles, through works which evinced great engineering talent and 

 skill. It was this that had led to the last proposition that had been 

 gravely made in England regarding the water supply of London, viz. 

 that it should be brought from Ullswater — on the borders of Cumberland 

 — two hundred and forty miles distant from the Metropolis. It was this 

 that led Sir Hugh Rose, shortly before he left India, to throw out the 

 suggestion that it might be advisable to supply certain of the larger 

 Military stations of Upper India with water brought down from its 

 clear and uncontaminated sources on the Himalayas. 



The same experiences ought, Dr. S. thinks, to lead us to reject the 

 notion that Hooghly water can in any sense or with any justice 

 be said to be comparatively pure — when in point of fact it is absolutely 

 impure from a mixture of vegetable decay, common salt from the 

 sea brought up by the tide, and foecal decomposition resulting from a 

 thousand impurities of which we have direct knowledge. 



In conclusion Dr. Smith begged to reiterate his objection to expe- 

 riments and analyses conducted for the determination of organic im- 

 purities of water which had been kept for months or even for weeks. 



He believed he was right in saying that such a mode of procedure 

 would not be accepted as a reliable one by any Chemical Society in 

 Great Britain or Europe. • 



Mr. Blanford said : — " There is a method of deciding the merits of 

 rival and mutually discrepant statements of fact, well known in another 

 arena of discussion, though I believe it is not common in Societies 

 which busy themselves only with Science. It is to assume that the 

 one, usually the more dogmatic statement, is absolutely and necessarily 

 true, and to carry to the discredit of the opposite view, any admission 

 of possible error, which may be made by a philosophical opponent, who 

 considers that the best way to arrive at truth is to treat his own view 

 as critically as that which he rejects. I cannot but think that it is, 

 somewhat in this manner, that Dr. Smith has discussed Dr. Waldie's 

 paper. Dr. Macnamara's report being prepared for the information 

 of legislators, who wish for results, and not for a critical discussion of 

 the means pursued to obtain them, is necessarily somewhat dogmatic 



