138 
BURRELL : DROPPING WELL AT KNARESBOROUGH. 
common bank about thirty years ago, and leaves a chasm between 
them from a yard and a-half to three yards wide. This spring sends 
out about twenty gallons in a minute of the sweetest water I ever 
tasted. ...... It springs out of a small 
hole like a httle sough in the middle of a thick set of shrubs. This 
little isthmus is beatifully cloathed with ash, osier, elm, ivy, 
sambocus, ceincaria major, geraniums, wood mercury, hartstongue, 
sage, ladies' mantle, scabious, cowslips, wild angelica, meadow sweet, 
&c. This water both at the spring and from the rocks is of equal 
weight, and each twenty-four grains in a pint heavier than common 
water. I exhaled eighteen pints of this water from the spring, and 
it left seventeen scruples of sediment." 
It is classified by Dr. Elliott in 1781 as "a water containing an 
earth." He further states " the dose has formerly been several quarts 
in the day, but three or four half-pints are now judged sufficient." 
In 1783 Dr. Walker, Physician to the General Infirmary at 
Leeds, made some qualitative tests of the water, and sums up the 
result of his examination by stating that " the petrifying spring at 
Knaresborough contains a considerable quantity of selenitkal and a 
smaller quantity of calcareous earth." i\s will be shown by the 
analysis which follows, the predominant constituent of the water is 
calcium sulphate, i.e., the selenitical earth. Dr. Walker may there- 
fore claim the credit of being the first to discover the real nature of 
the water. 
Dr. Adam Hunter's treatise on the Harrogate Waters was 
published in the year 1830. In it we find what may be considered the 
first real analysis of the water. In the local guide books this analysis 
is usually referred to as being by Hunter. This is incorrect, as it 
was made by Mr. W. West, of Leeds, and this is so stated by 
Dr. Hunter in his preface. Mr. West appears to have made a special 
study of the mineral waters of Yorkshire, more especially of the 
West Riding, for in the British Association Reports, 1844, there is a 
paper by W. West giving the analyses of some fifty of the Yorkshire 
mineral waters. 
His numbers were : — 
