Page 15 - 1915, Springs of CA.

SPRINGS OF CALIFORNIA. 15
NATURAL WATERS.
USE OF TERMS "MINERAL WATER" AND "PURE WATER."
No natural water is chemically pure, even rain water containing
notable amounts of dust, ammonia, and, especially near the coast,
of saline material. All natural waters may therefore be said to be
mineral waters. The terms pure and mineral are often used, however,
to indicate the suitability of a water for some particular use. For
example", a water considered for a municipal or industrial supply is
called "pure" if it does not contain objectionable amounts of foreign
matter. As waters with a markedly mineral taste and all waters
bottled and sold as drinking water, regardless of their mineral content,
are customarily termed mineral waters, it follows that a mineral water
may be so called because it is notably free from mineral or other
foreign ingredients.
To a greater or less degree water dissolves practically every sub-
stance with which it comes in contact. Temperature and pressure
and the presence of dissolved matter greatly affect the solvent power
of water, tending to increase or to decrease it. As natural waters
encounter many minerals in their journeys through and over the
ground, nearly all waters contain many mineral substances, though
comparatively few of these substances are present in relatively
large amount. Furthermore, many waters are saturated with respect
to some of the less soluble minerals, but a natural water that will
dissolve no more of any mineral is rare.
MINERAL ANALYSIS-OF WATER.
To make a mineral analysis of water is to determine the propor-
tions of the various mineral substances it holds in solution. The
analyst is unable to determine what chemical compounds have been
dissolved by the water, nor can he ascertain by the customary
methods of analysis, what compounds, if any, exist in the solution.
His work is limited, in the main, to the determination, by indirect
methods, of certain roots or portions of compounds, known as radicles.
On account of the indirect methods employed some of the radicles
reported in analyses can not definitely be stated to be such, but are
merely conventional terms for expressing the results of some chemical
reaction in which several radicles may have taken part. With all its
uncertainties, however, the statement of a mineral analysis of a
water is a representation of the composition of the water solution,
and from this statement can be inferred with a considerable degree
of accuracy much of the story of the water's journey through and
over the earth, and the effects that may be expected in various uses
of the water.
In conformity with the modern form of expression the analyses
are presented in this paper in terms of the radicles, the proportions