SOFT WATERS OF CENTRAL NEW YORK 
NICHOLAS KNIGHT AND J. B. SHUMAKER 
Sample No. i . — The sample of water was taken from a well in 
the town of Sangerfield, Oneida county, New York, about a mile 
and a half south of the village of Waterville. It is located on the 
flat land in the bottom of the Sangerfield valley near the head- 
waters of Chenango river. 
The well is forty- three feet in depth and was sunk in the early 
eighties. The top soil of the land in the locality is a clay loam and 
in boring the well the first twenty-seven feet encountered was 
hard clay. Underneath the clay was a dark coarse sand, entirely 
dififerent from any other formation in the neighborhood. This is 
an artesian well and it flows continuously. The figures in the 
table below express the amounts of the dififerent substances in 
a million parts of water. 
Total solids • . . 186.80 
SiOs 13.20 
Fe^Oa 00.00 
AUOs 3.20 
CaC03 113.20 
CaS04 4.00 
MgCOs 42.80 
NaCl and KCl ' 11.80 
Free ammonia 0.00 
Albuminoid • • 0.00 
Nitrogen in nitrates 0.00 
Nitrogen in nitrites 0.0003 
The water is pure and likewise unusually soft for the particu- 
lar locality. 
Dr. A. P. Brigham, Professor of Geology in Colgate University, 
in a private communication says : — “The bed rocks at Sangerfield 
for any moderate depth would be sandstone or possibly shaly 
sandstone of the Hamilton group ; but the fact is that most of the 
well waters and pond waters of the region are very hard owing 
to the amount of limestone flour which has been incorporated in 
the local materials of the glacial drift by moving from limestone 
formations that lie to the northward. However, water of a softer 
