The alchemists dreamed and talked of that universal solvent which they so long and vainly endeavored to discover; still, for all this, not only the alchemist of old, but his more immediate successor, the chemist of to-day, has found no solvent so universal as water. No liquid has nearly so wide a range of dissolving powers, and, taking things all round, no liquid exercises so slight an action upon the bodies dissolved—evaporate the water away, and the dissolved substance is obtained in an unchanged condition; at any rate, this is the general rule.
The function of water in nature is essentially that of a solvent or a medium of circulation; it is not, in any sense, a food, yet without it no food can be assimilated by an animal. Without water the solid materials of the globe would be unable to come together so closely as to interchange their elements; and unless the temperatures were sufficiently high to establish an igneous fluidity, such as undoubtedly exists in the sun, there would be no circulation of matter to speak of, and the earth would be, as it were, locked up or dead.
When we look upon water as the nearest approach to a universal solvent that even the astute scientist of to-day has been able to discover, who can wonder that it is never found absolutely pure in nature? For wherever it accumulates it dissolves something from its surroundings. Still, in a rain-drop just formed we have very nearly pure water; but even this contains dissolved air to the extent of about one-fiftieth of its volume, and as the drop falls downward it takes up such impurities as may be floating in the atmosphere; so that if our rain-drop is falling immediately after a long drought, it becomes charged with nitrate or nitrite of ammonia and various organic matters—perhaps also the spores or germs of disease. Thus it will be seen that rain tends to wonderfully clear or wash the atmosphere, and we all know how much a first rain is appreciated as an air purifier, and how it carries down with it valuable food for plants. The rain-water, in percolating through or over the land, flows mainly toward the rivers, and in doing so it becomes more or less charged with mineral matter, lime salts and common salt being the chief of them; while some of that water which has penetrated more deeply into the earth takes up far more solid matter than is ordinarily found in river water. The bulk of this more or less impure water tends toward the ocean, taking with it its load of salt and lime. Constant evaporation, of course, takes place from the surface of the sea, so that the salt and lime accumulate, this latter being, however, ultimately deposited as shells, coral, and chalk, while nearly pure or naturally distilled water once more condenses in the form of clouds. This process, by which a constant supply of purified water is kept up in the natural economy, is imitated on a small scale when water is converted into steam by the action of heat, and this vapor is cooled so as to reproduce liquid water, the operation in question being known as distillation.
For this purpose an apparatus known as a still is required; and although by law one must pay an annual license fee for the right to use a still, it is not usual for the government authorities to enforce the law when a still is merely used for purifying water.
One of the best forms of still for the photographer to employ consists of a tin can or bottle in which the water is boiled, and to this a tin tube is adapted by means of a cork, one end of this tin tube terminating in a coil passing through a tub or other vessel of cold water. A gas burner, as shown, is a convenient source of heat, and in order to insure a complete condensation of the vapor, the water in the cooling tub must be changed now and again.
Sometimes the vapor is condensed by being allowed to play against the inside of a conical cover which is adapted to a saucepan, and is kept cool by the external application of cold water; and in this case the still takes the form represented by the subjoined diagrams; such compact and portable stills being largely employed in Ireland for the private manufacture of whisky.
It is scarcely necessary to say that the condensed water trickles down on the inside of the cone, and flows out at the spout.
An extemporized arrangement of a similar character may be made by passing a tobacco pipe through the side of a tin saucepan as shown below, and inverting the lid of the saucepan; if the lid is now kept cool by frequent changes of water inside it, and the pipe is properly adjusted so as to catch the drippings from the convex side of the lid, a considerable quantity of distilled water may be collected in an hour or so.