Professor Buckland on Artesian Wells. 327 



between the two saucers just mentioned ; and wherever a 

 hole is bored, or a well sunk, into these water-bearing beds, 

 through the impermeable strata that lie over them, the water 

 will rise to the level of the lowest natural outlet or spring 

 that gives vent to the overflowings of the sheet of water thus 

 penetrated. As the streamlet that flows over the lower lip 

 of the margin of a common pond prevents the further rise of 

 water in that pond, so the springs that issue from chalk, and 

 from all other water-bearing strata, prevent the permanent 

 rise of subterranean water within the crevices of these strata 

 much above the level of their respective springs. 



The surface-line of any subterranean sheet of water may be 

 ascertained by measuring a series of wells at distant intervals 

 along the dip of the stratum under examination ; and this 

 subterraneous water-surface is usually found to be at its 

 greatest height at the end of the rainy months of winter, and 

 lowest at the end of the rainy months of autumn. In the 

 village of Hursley, the water, after very rainy seasons, over- 

 flows from the wells of nearly every cottage ; in the end of 

 autumn, their water is usually more than forty feet below the 

 surface. Observations by Mr Fowlie, the intelligent steward 

 of Sir W. Heathcote, had discovered a sympathy between 

 these village wells and three which have been sunk at a higher 

 level in the park and farm-yard; and a similar sympathy 

 may, ere long, be found between the Hursley wells and the 

 deep well upon Southampton Common. The water they 

 now extracted from the latter well was probably supplied by 

 rain that sunk into the chalk in distant parts of the country ; 

 springs of fresh water often rose even from fissures at the 

 bottom of the sea, and one near Chittagong was 100 miles 

 distant from any land. M. Arago, speaking of the water in the 

 well at Grenelle, near Paris, says it may come 40, 80, or 180 

 miles under ground to supply that well. An Artesian well at 

 Tours rose with a jet that sustained in the air a cannon ball ; 

 the same jet has brought up a great quantity of seeds ; and 

 the nearest place at which these seeds could have entered the 

 stratum below the chalk to come that distance under ground 

 was thirty or forty miles off". There were two swallow holes 

 at Hursley, where, at certain seasons of flood, the water is 



