those persons labour who are afflicted with what is commonly called gravel complaints; and many other ailments might be named, that are always aggravated by the use of waters abounding in saline and earthy substances. The purity of the waters employed in some of the arts and manufactures, is an object of not less consequence. In the process of brewing malt liquors, soft water is preferable to hard. Every brewer knows that the largest possible quantity of the extractive matter of the malt is obtained in the least possible time, and at the smallest cost, by means of soft water. In the art of the dyer, hard water not only opposes the solution of several dye stuffs, but it also alters the natural tints of some delicate colours; whilst in others again it precipitates the earthy and saline matters with which it is impregnated, into the delicate fibres of the stuff, and thus impedes the softness and brilliancy of the dye. The bleacher cannot use with advantage waters impregnated with earthy salts; and a minute portion of iron imparts to the cloth a yellowish hue. To the manufacturer of painters' colours, water as pure as possible is absolutely essential for the successful preparation of several delicate pigments. Carmine, madder lake, ultramarine, and Indian yellow, cannot be prepared without perfectly pure water. For the steeping or raiting of flax, soft water is absolutely necessary; in hard water the flax may be immersed for months, till its texture be injured, and still the ligneous matter will not be decomposed, and the fibres properly separated. In the culinary art, the effects of water more or less pure are likewise obvious. Good and pure water softens the fibres of animal and vegetable matters more readily than such as is called _hard_. Every cook knows that dry or ripe pease, and other farinaceous seeds, cannot _readily_ be boiled soft in hard water; because the farina of the seed is not perfectly soluble in water loaded with earthy salts. Green esculent vegetable substances are more tender when boiled in soft water than in hard water; although hard water imparts to them a better colour. The effects of hard and soft water may be easily shown in the following manner. EXPERIMENT. Let two separate portions of tea-leaves be macerated, by precisely the same processes, in circumstances all alike, in similar and separate vessels, the one containing hard and the other soft water, either hot or cold, the infusion made with the soft water will have by far the