Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/486

470 similar annoyances are by no means uncommon elsewhere. Regarding this we learn that "not long after the introduction of the Croton water into New York, and of the Cochituate water into Boston, the fish-like odor prevailed for some time to a most disagreeable extent. While this odor is of most frequent occurrence, others of very different character are occasionally reported. Last year the Bradlee Basin, which supplies a part of the water for Boston, became affected with an odor described as closely resembling cucumbers. None of the other ponds in the neighborhood were similarly affected. About the same time the water of Springfield, Mass., exhaled the odor of green corn. In 1874 the water of Cherbourg, France, became intolerable from an odor undistinguishable from that of a pig-sty. This same odor occurred last summer in Horn Pond, from which East Boston and Charlestown are in part supplied. The odor of decaying wood is not uncommon, especially in early summer." And, in response to a circular letter sent to the various cities of the United States and Canada, the author learned that the fish-like odor was far more prevalent than he had previously supposed, it having occurred in all the following cities: Concord, N. H.; Keene, N. H.; Burlington, Vt.; Boston, Mass.; Lowell, Mass.; Holyoke, Mass.; Brookline, Mass.; Springfield, Mass.; New Haven, Conn.; West Meriden, Conn.; New Britain, Conn.; Hartford, Conn.; Auburn, N. Y.; Newburg, N. Y.; Poughkeepsie, N. Y.; Trenton, N. J.; York, Pa.; Baltimore, Md.; Norfolk, Va.; Nashville, Tenn.; and St. Paul, Minn.

In these letters reference is made to the cucumber-odor, as having been observed at Boston, Springfield, Holyoke, Mass., and at Poughkeepsie, N. Y. In the majority of cases the odor was connected with the increase of temperature in the beginning of summer, and continued only for a week or two. In other cases it began in the autumn, and continued into the winter or early spring. The supply of the cities named is derived from ponds, lakes, and rivers; but it is interesting to note that there is no report of any fish-like odor in the water of any city supplied from the Great Lakes. These odors are extremely volatile; boiling readily expels them, and they gradually escape when the water is exposed to the air.

Hemlock Lake, in Livingston County, New York, situated thirty miles south of the city of Rochester, is about seven miles in length, and has an elevation of about 400 feet above the level of the city. The water is taken from the northern end of the lake, and conveyed in a large conduit-pipe a distance of nearly twenty miles to the main storage-reservoir in the town of West Rush; from here it is carried to the reservoir at Mount Hope, whence it is distributed to all parts of the city. "The difference of elevation between the storage and the distributing reservoirs is 115 feet, and renders it possible, except in winter, to throw up the whole volume of water, as it enters the Mount Hope Reservoir, to a height of about eighty feet, thus