s.

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
strongest taste, although it possesses less colour than the infusion
made with the hard water. It will strike a more intense black with a
solution of sulphate of iron, and afford a more abundant precipitate,
with a solution of animal jelly, which at once shews that soft water has
extracted more tanning matter, and more gallic acid, from the
tea-leaves, than could be obtained from them under like circumstances by
means of hard water.

Many animals which are accustomed to drink soft water, refuse hard
water. Horses in particular prefer the former. Pigeons refuse hard water
when they have been accustomed to soft water.

CHARACTERS OF GOOD WATER.

A good criterion of the purity of water fit for domestic purposes, is
its softness. This quality is at once obvious by the touch, if we only
wash our hands in it with soap. Good water should be beautifully
transparent; a slight opacity indicates extraneous matter. To judge of
the perfect transparency of water, a quantity of it should be put into a
deep glass vessel, the larger the better, so that we can look down
perpendicularly into a considerable mass of the fluid; we may then
readily discover the slightest degree of muddiness much better than if
the water be viewed through the glass placed between the eye and the
light. It should be perfectly colourless, devoid of odour, and its
taste soft and agreeable. It should send out air-bubbles when poured
from one vessel into another; it should boil pulse soft, and form with
soap an uniform opaline fluid, which does not separate after standing
for several hours.

It is to the presence of common air and carbonic acid gas that common
water owes its taste, and many of the good effects which it produces on
animals and vegetables. Spring water, which contains more air, has a
more lively taste than river water.

Hence the insipid or vapid taste of newly boiled water, from which these
gases are expelled: fish can