188 
IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
neighbors, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan, with their almost 
innumerable lakes and rivers of excellent and never-failing water. 
Probably Iowa has no lake or river water suitable for a municipal 
supply without treatment. The lakes are on the northern border 
of the state away from important centers of population. The im- 
portant rivers that may be relied upon to supply large amounts of 
water, such as it is, are the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Des Moines 
and the Cedar. Apparently, it must always be that a very large pro- 
portion of the Iowa cities and towns must depend upon drilled wells 
for their water supplies, or at any rate upon wells of some sort; 
that is upon ground waters. Now the drilling of deep wells is very 
expensive. Well number 3 at Grinnell, cased and ready for the 
machinery for pumping, cost $8,000. Before city officers or even 
the isolated farmer in need of a better supply of water enters 
upon such an expensive and it may be, fruitless operation, he 
wants to know the probabilities, at least, that his efforts and outlay 
will be rewarded. To determine that matter is too large an under- 
taking for the individual or even the city. The government takes 
up the problem and by the correlation of data at hand and collecti- 
ble it is able to chart the water probabilities of a distrct or a state, 
so that any individual or corporation may know in advance what 
to expect from a drilling, — how deep he will have to drill to get 
the desired supply of water, and what its quality will most prob- 
ably be. 
The analytical work on Iowa well waters during the past two 
years has been done in the chemical laboratory of Iowa College, 
mainly by the writer. There were shipped to this laboratory about 
thirty samples of water from Minnesota deep wells. To make the 
analyses of these waters and also to assist in the Iowa work as 
might be necessary, Mr. H. S. Spaulding of the national Survey 
was sent to Grinnell and remained about three months. About 
twenty-five analyses of Iowa waters are to be credited to him. 
The waters that have been chemically investigated have been 
those of wells 500 feet deep or more; also, from wells as shallow 
as 100 feet when they supplied towns or represented large and 
important water-bearing sand areas. In general only a sufficient 
number of well waters from any given locality has been analyzed 
to determine with certainty the water bearing capabilities of the 
strata penetrated. In some cases spring waters have been in- 
vestigated when the flows were large and when the waters were 
used or likely to serve important economic or other interests. 
