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By L D. Broughton, n.D.
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CHEMICALLY pure water is a curiosity, found almost never outside the laboratory, and even then it is cleared of its impurities only by the most careful and repeated filtration and distillation. Rain water, Nature's .nearest approach to purity in water, and snow, its frozen prototype, meet floating particles in the air, and absorb gases ; and, when rain falls near the cities, the acids that rise from the industrial plants become a part of its contents. Near the ocean the salt mingles with the water as it drops upon the ground. Surface water, ponds, lakes, creeks, streams, and oceans, dissolve the minerals that bar its passage, or form its beds. Decaying vegetation, refuse from fishes, impurities of various kinds float in and upon it; larvae of insects, and other excreta make up a total that cannot be computed. Ground water, which is the water that lies deep in the soil, being the rain, or surface water that has been filtered through the sand, comes to the surface in springs or wells and is probably the purest that reaches us. Even that, however, affords such a good breeding place for bacteria that it is not long within reach before it is also infected.
Apparent purity is no safeguard so far as water is concerned. The thirsty traveler in the desert shuns the spring that looks beautiful to the eye with the clearness of its water, and gladly drinks from that which is dirty, and surrounded by buzzing insects and has floating animal life in it ; for the water would not be clear if it were not poisonous.
In referring to drinking water, therefore, we mean pure when the dissolved
or floating substances in it are not injurious or disease-producing. It is not likely that we should be so ready to drink from the sparkling glass if we could see the floating life in every drop as it is shown by the microscope. Truly, "where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise" when it relates to the liquids and solids that enter our mouths to satisfy our thirst and hunger.
Nature teems with life. From the amoeba, the most primitive form of
A ROTIFER.
animal life, with its single cell, up thru the myriads of forms to the highest, man, made up of the most complex structure of cells, the number and variety of organisms in the water and on or in the earth, cannot even be estimated. From the semi-vegetable bacteria, so small that millions may exist
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