210 MINERAL WATERS AND MEDICINAL SPRINGS OF ESSEX.
of striking black with gall (which was 24. hours). Essay'd with gall, [it] was thick
and dirty white, which precipitated in the former experiment, shewing an affinity
with common salt, in this with nitrous. It is much of the weight of common
water, and takes a blew black with galls." 56
Allen omits the foregoing from his second edition of 1711,
because, he says,57 such small and unimportant mineral springs
were endless in number.
Monro refers to this spring,58 but gives no additional infor-
mation in regard to it, and we believe no later writer notices it.
We have been unable to identify this spring, but Mr. Dalton
surmises that its water came, in any case, from the Glacial
Gravel, close to its junction with the London Clay.
(6).—The "Felstead" (i.e., Little Dunmow) Well.—Another
small spring, first discovered by Allen and recorded by him in
1699, is in the parish of Little Dunmow, though very close to
the border of Felstead parish and not far from the village :
hence, it has been spoken of as the "Felstead" spring by Allen
and most other writers.
Allen classes the water as "purely chalybeat"59 (that is to
say, it contained no salts of nitre) and he says of it :—
" This water lies in a moor,60 the bottom whereof is a cemented rock.61 The
earth where the spring rises is fat and bituminous ov unctuous and very ferru-
gineous. [There is] no incrustation in the boggy hole where the water stands,
but the water that passes through the meadow begins to incrust as it touches
this ground. It is of the same weight exactly with Tunbridge [Water], It
becomes milky with a solution of Sal Saturn), and with Lignum Nephriticum
suffer'd no stain, but only a milky cloud swimming in it. This is but a small
spring, scarce more than a land-drain."
In his second edition of 1711, Allen does not describe this
spring separately, because, as he says, such small chalybeate
springs are very numerous ; but he refers to it in three places,62
in one of which he says :—
" I had the success of curing a young gentleman of the same stoppages just
now mention'd, suppos'd to be a phthisis, by a small ousing spring at Felsted,
which I chose by the taste, lightness, and rocky cements, on which I ventured to
recommend it."
56 The closing sentences are obscure, apparently through some error in punctuation, which
we have endeavoured to amend.
57 Mineral Waters, pref., fo. c4, obv. (1711).
58 Treatise, i., pp..268 and 384 (1770).
59 Chalybeat and Purging Waters, p. 28 (1699).
60 He means, no doubt, a bog.
61 Mr. Dalton suggests that by this he means iron conglomerate, with or without
calc-tufa.
62 Mineral Waters, pp. 28, 30, and 58 (1711).