Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T18:30:57.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

6. On the Physical Conditions of Rivers entering a Tidal Sea; from Observations on the Spey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2014

Hugh Robert Mill  and
T. Morton Ritchie
Get access

Extract

In connection with the observations carried on by one of us on the salinity and temperature of estuaries, it seemed desirable to examine the condition of the water near the mouth of a river flowing directly into the sea. For this purpose it was necessary to select a stream of considerable volume and free from pollution.

Type
Proceedings 1885-86
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 13 , 1886 , pp. 460 - 485
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1886

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

note * page 460 Mill, , “On the Salinity of the Water in the Firth of Forth,” Proc. Boy. Soc. Edin., xiii. pp. 29–64Google Scholar; Abstract in Nature, xxxi. p. 541; “On the Temperature of the Water in the Firth of Forth,”Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin., xiii. pp. 157–167; “On the Salinity of the Estuary of the Tay and of St Andrews Bay,” ibid., pp. 347–350; “On the Physical Conditions of Water in Estuaries,” Brit. Ass. Rep., 1885, and Scottish Geographical Magazine, ii. pp. 20–26.Google Scholar

note * page 461 Mr Balmer informs us that the river was diverted in February 1860 to a straight course, in the expectation that by its action on the shingle banks it would gradually move back to its old westerly position. Instead of doing so, it cut a new channel more to the east, and continued for several months to extend this until the mouth had advanced about quarter of a mile to the eastward. Then the normal action recommenced, and shingle has been steadily laid down on the east bank and cut off from the western ever since, so that the mouth is moving westward every month; and in a few years it is expected to come back to the position it occupied prior to 1860.

note * page 462 The fact that sea water forced its way up the bed of a tidal river under the opposing current of fresh water has been known at any rate since 1812, when the phenomenon was studied on the Dee at Aberdeen by Mr Robert Stevenson.—Stevenson, David, Canal and River Engineering, 2nd ed., p. 124Google Scholar.

† The hydrophore of Mr Bobert Stevenson (Canal and River Engineering, p. 126) would have been more suitable, but there was no opportunity of getting one made.

note * page 467 From the bottom upwards.

note * page 471 Since writing the above our attention has been directed to a paper by M. Adolphe Guèrard, of Marseilles, read this summer (1885) and printed in vol. lxxxii. of the Minutes of Proceedings Inst. C.E., pp. 305–336, in which he employs (p.: 334) almost identical expressions to describe the manner in which a tidal river is affected by the sea. His treatment of the subject is entirely from the engineer's point of view.

note * page 482 Min. Proc. Inst. C.E., lxxviii. 212, and Ixxxi.295.