ARTESIAN WATERS IN THE ARID REGION. 61 1 



a few in the deserts of Nevada. In Mexico they are obtained in 

 the valley deposits of the city of Mexico, the Lake Chapala basin 

 of Jalisco, and could be secured at many other points. The 

 grandest demonstration of the principle, however, is found in the 

 famous San Luis Park of Colorado. It is true that this valley, 

 owing to the large area of mountains surrounding it, has an un- 

 usual number of " lost rivers " supplying water to the valley de- 

 posits from which over thirty-seven hundred flowing wells have 

 been obtained. Less than ten per cent of these attain a depth of 

 seven hundred feet, and barely fifteen per cent reach four hundred 

 feet. On the great La Noria Desert, stretching for one hundred 

 miles northeast of El Paso, Texas, between the Organ and 

 Franklin ranges, which is void of a drop of surface water, abun- 

 dant supplies of underground water are now procured at a depth 

 of two hundred feet, and are pumped by windmills for irrigating 

 purposes. 



The wells of all these localities were drilled haphazard, without 

 reference to the geological principle we have endeavored to de- 

 scribe. If this principle could be made known that the under- 

 ground waters of the arid region are stored in the desert deposits, 

 and not in the mountain rocks, there is no reason to doubt that 

 wells could be procured in most of these innumerable wastes of 

 the arid region, which would at least suffice for the passing trav- 

 eler, and in many cases supply water for live stock and irrigation, 

 sufficient to supply the necessaries of life to the mining popula- 

 tions of the adjacent mountain regions. 



According to M. V. Brandiconrte, of the Linnsean Society of the north of 

 France, the Eucalyptus alpina, once abundant in Mount William, Australia, is now 

 known only by a single specimen in the botanical garden of Melbourne; Psiadia 

 rotundifolia, a tree of the composita of St. Helena, is reduced to a single natural 

 specimen and a few cultivated ones at Kew. No living representative is now 

 known of the dwarf palm (Chamterops humilis) which once grew near Nice. The 

 orchid Spiranthes Ro?nanzoviana has apparently disappeared from the meadow 

 in Ireland which was its only known station. Some fifty species have disap- 

 peared, or nearly disappeared, from the department of Sonne, in France. Most 

 of this devastation is the work of amateurs, horticulturists, or botanists. 



A party of Chinese traders who recently visited the interior of southern For- 

 mosa have brought back, according to Mr. D. J. MacGowan, stories which remind 

 one of the fairy tales or of the fancies of the Arabian Nights. They lodged in 

 stone caverns, and the chattering of monkeys and the sounds of insects seemed to 

 them "appalling and indescribable." The region was so weird that it reminded 

 them of "legends of the kingdom of hobgoblins." They describe forests of trees 

 of "prodigious girth," some of them measuring more than ten outstretched arms; 

 and a tree flourishing in those forests that bears "flowers, red and white, which 

 are larger than a sieve and of extraordinary fragrance." The flowers thus de- 

 scribed are supposed to be epiphyte orchids. 



