Note 33 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
A bottle of the water tightly corked burst shortly afterwards by gaseous pressure; the bottle having been filled at the bottom of the well doubtless accounts for this, the pressure due to the head having caused solution of the gas to a greater extent than could be supported at the surface. The evolved gas was at first suspected to be methane, as there is frequently a great deal of decaying vegetable matter in the mouths of the wells; but it extinguished a taper, and, moreover, the water runs too rapidly for any accumulation of gaseous decomposition-products to take place.