WHY BO SPHnVGS AND WELLS OVERFLOW? 



399 



Professor Bucklancl's address given in " Littell's Living Age " was not 

 a verbatim report, even this statement seemed to me likely enough to 

 have suffered a slight change at the hands of the reporter ; so I went 

 one step further back, to Professor Buckland's " Bridgewater Treatise," 

 of which he spoke in his address, where I find this statement : " At 

 Perpignan and Tours, M. Arago states that the water rushes up with 

 so much force, that a cannon-ball placed in the pipe of an artesian 

 well is violently ejected by the ascending stream." Something like 

 this is probably what Professor Buckland said in his address ; and the 

 difference between the ejecting of a ball from a pipe and the sustain- 

 ing of it in the air may have seemed to the reporter of the address of 

 slight consequence ; but when you go from ejecting a hall from a pipe 

 to the sustaining of it in the air, and then to the sustaining of a can- 

 non, one is reminded of the man who was said to have thrown up some- 

 thing as black as a crow, and as the story passed from mouth to mouth 

 he was finally declared to have thrown up three black croics. 



On page 76 of the Is ovember " Popular Science Monthly," in dis- 

 cussing Mr. Howell's article on the " Subterranean Outlet " to the Up- 

 per Lake region, Mr. Green says of Mr. Howell that " having shown 

 that Lake Superior at its surface is 600 feet above the Atlantic and at 

 its bottom 573, and Ontario to be 235 feet above, with the same depth 

 as Superior, he proceeds to make the following significant statement." 

 This quotation would make Lakes Superior and Ontario each only 

 twenty-seven feet deep, which is evidently a mistake ; and on refer- 

 ring to Mr. Howell's article in " Scribner's Monthly " we find that he 

 did not say that the bottom of Lake Superior is 573 above the At- 

 lantic, but that " we find its bed descending 573 feet below the level of 

 the Atlantic " ; neither did he say that Ontario has the same depth as 

 Superior, but that it " descends to an equal distance below the level 

 of the Atlantic." 



But let us begin at the beginning of Mr. Green's article, and see 

 how he starts off. After a few words of introduction, he quotes from 

 the account of Professor Buckland's address a few sentences ending 

 as follows : " At Brentford, England, there were many wells that con- 

 tinually overflowed their orifice, which is a few feet only above the 

 Thames. In the London wells the water rises to a less level than in 

 those at Brentford." Mr. Green then says : " By hydrostatic pres- 

 sure, the Professor, of course, means a head, i. e., that the water flowed 

 to these wells from a higher point. If this rise were due to hydro- 

 static pressure, why did the water rise to a lower level at London than 

 at Brentford among the hills ? " Now, Professor Buckland's state- 

 ment, just quoted, makes the orifice of the Brentford wells "a few 

 feet only above the Thames," and Mr. Green makes his first imaginary 

 difficulty by placing these wells "among the hills." He then quotes 

 largely from Professor Buckland's address, and afterward exclaims : 

 "Wells to supply London, the Professor thinks, must not be utilized 



