MAKING SEA WATER POTABLE.
[Footnote: Read lately before the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society]
By THOMAS KAY, President of the Stockport Natural History Society.
The author called attention to the absence of research in this direction, and how man, endowed to overcome every physical disability which encompassed him on land, was powerless to live on the wide ocean, although it is teeming with life.
The water for experiment was taken from the English Channel, about fifty miles southwest of the Eddystone Lighthouse, and it was found to correspond closely with the analysis of the Atlantic published by Roscoe, viz.: Total solids 35.976, of which the total chlorides, are 32.730, representing 19.868 of chlorine.
The waters of the Irish Sea and the English Channel nearer to the German Ocean, from their neighborhood to great rivers, are weaker than the above.
Schweitzer's analysis of the waters of the English Channel, near Brighton, was taken as representing the composition of the sea, and is here given:
Sodium chloride 27.059
Potassium " 0.766
Magnesium " 3.666
" bromide 0.029
" sulphate 2.296
Calcium " 1.406
" carbonate 0.033
Iodine and ammoniacal salts traces
Water 964.795
________
1000.000
The chlorides in the--
Irish Sea are about 30 per mille.
English Channel are about 31 "
Beyond the Eddystone are 32 "