president's address. 853 



still replenishes the waste of the subterranean pent up waters. 

 This water being tapped on the lower lands will, as a matter of 

 course, rise to the level of that on the hill side, irrespective of, 

 and leaving untouched, the upper waters accumulated by percola- 

 tion. Thus at St. Oen, in France, double pipes are used, one 

 considerably larger than the other. The smaller pipe brings up 

 the water from the lower stratum to the highest part of the jet, 

 and the larger one from that of the upper stratum, so that two 

 distinct streams of water are obtained at the same time for the 

 supply of a canal basin. The same principle has also been 

 adopted where the water was impure within the larger pipe, but 

 kept apart by the inner pipe from contaminating the flow of fresh 

 water applied to domestic purposes. 



The first record, (1 speak under correction) suggestive of the 

 probability of obtaining in Australia jet d' eaux of pure water by 

 artificial means, will be found in "0. J. Geological Society of 

 London," Vol. 28, part 3, the article being contributed in 1872 

 by the late Mr. Eichard Daintree, C.E., Government Geologist 

 for Northern Queensland. After describing a hot alkaline 

 spring on the Saxby Eiver, a tributary of the Flinders, he con- 

 sidered that " the importance of this evidence as to the proba- 

 bility of finding artesian supplies of water in districts where such 

 springs are met with, should not be lost sight of, and a bore put 

 down in the vicinity of one of them (for this was not the only 

 one) might be successful in obtaining water, and thus lead to most 

 important practical results." 



Mr. W. G. Bell, of Bimmerah Station, when camping in 1866 at 

 Mr. J. T. Allan's Station, (Mount Enniskillen) on the Barcoo 

 Eiver, North Queensland, about 300 miles from the source of 

 Flinders Eiver, met with six or seven of these alkaline mud 

 springs, which were from three to four feet high and with 

 diameters of from five to seven feet. They were generally placed 

 on the flat country at the foot of sandhills. The alkaline water, 

 of rather a milky colour, was always trickling down the sides of 



