River water (no. 2) : a reply to Dr. Frankland / by Charles Meymott Tidy.

  • Tidy, Charles Meymott, 1843-1892.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: River water (no. 2) : a reply to Dr. Frankland / by Charles Meymott Tidy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    4/20 (page 4)
    land. It was impossible for me on the evening these papers were read, owing to the short time at my disposal, and the practical difficulty of grasping offhand the real force of objections, to reply to Dr, Frank- land’s kindly criticisms, more especially when additional importance (if such could be the case) was given to the discussion by the remarks with which Professor Huxley and Professor Tyndall favoured the Society. I thank the Society for permitting me to bring the subject before them once more, and so far as I am concerned for the last time. The delay on my part in replying to Dr. Frankland’s criticisms has been partly the result of private circumstances over which I was powerless, and partly because I desired to make my reply, in some small measure, a record of new work. And FIRST—as to the oxidation of peat. In my paper I detailed numerous analyses of Shannon water for the purpose of showing the disappearance of peaty matter in the onward flow of a river. I remarked that—although along the whole of the fifty mile course of the Shannon I described, and with which I am intimately acquainted, more or less peaty di-ainage is to be seen flowing in at frequent intervals—at certain places deep black streams, the drainage of hundreds of acres of bog land, discharge themselves into the river, increasing notably, even to the naked eye, the peaty condition of the water generally. I then showed by analysis that between certain spots, choosing intervals where as far as I could judge the peaty drainage discharged into the river was comparatively little (although let me add it would have been impossible to have chosen any interval where there was none), the quantity of peat manifestly lessened after a certain run, the organic carbon in one instance (viz., after the flow of a mile from Killaloe downwards) decreasing from 0‘8 per 100,000 parts to 0-48, and in a second case (the famous Doonas falls being situated in the interval) from 0'84 to 0'59. Dr. Franklaud in answer to this argues first of all that the river Shannon is not well fitted for experiments (to use his own words) either “ in proof or disproof of oxidation,” because (and the reason is important) it exhibits “ such sudden bounds ” in the proportion of the organic elements. I chose the Shannon for the study of the results of flow on peaty matter, partly because the opportunity occurred to me for a more than ordinarily careful and systematic inspection of the river, but chiefly because the Shannon was a highly peaty river, absolutely free fi’om any suspicion of sewage, full of fish of the most delicate kind (for Shannon trout are known all the world over), and luxuriant with vegetation.