Management of Ponds and Welh. 115 



finding' water when jou have penetrated as far as means or 

 inelination allow ; and any well, where the Avater lies at more 

 than about 26 feet from the surface of the ground, requires a 

 costly pump. I consider, therefore, that for farm-buildings, where 

 there is no other supply, the best plan is to make a good wide 

 well (for a pump), about 26 or 28 feet deep, and to dig, a few 

 yards off, a really useful pond. Let all the water from the spout- 

 ing be conducted into the well, and make a waste-pipe from near 

 the top of the well into the pond. Thus, in a dry time, a shower 

 will fill the well first, and the surplus, if any, will be saved in 

 the pond. 



I will conclude with some remarks on springs and wells in 

 connection with the water-supply in rural parishes. A well 

 without a spring is, in reality, only a covered pond, though, 

 l)eing covered, it suffers no loss from evaporation by either sun or 

 wind. In some places a well sunk to a given stratum will be 

 quite sure to find Avater, while in other localities the springs are 

 so precarious that one well may never fail, though another, a few 

 yards off, may be worthless. A gentleman of my acquaintance 

 had a tolerably good well, about 25 feet deep, which never failed 

 for many hours together, though it had no great supply. He 

 was wise enough not to tamper with this, but wanting more 

 water, dug another well a few yards off. Having dug down to 

 about 50 feet without finding any water at all, he bored down 

 still deeper, until at last the water rose into the bore with a great 

 rush, and he fancied he was going to have a grand supply. The 

 next morning, however, it had all vanished, and he could never 

 again get any water there. He had, in fact, tapped a spring, 

 which, almost as soon as it was tapped, lost itself again through 

 a vein of sand. Strange to say, the original well was in nowise 

 affected by the new one. 



But here let me say a word of caution against a deception 

 which I have known to be practised by professional well-borers. 

 At a certain homestead a well was dug down to a limestone-rock 

 without finding any water ; the borers were then ordered to pierce 

 the rock till they did find water. The men accordingly spent 

 some days at the bottom of the well, and professed to have bored 

 to some unheard-of depth, but without success, and the job was 

 reluctantly given up. For some years the tenant was put to the 

 expense of carting water from a distance almost every day. At 

 last, however, he engaged a man, who had been successful with a 

 deep well in a neighbouring parish, to try and obtain water for 

 him. This man examined the well, and feeling sure that there 

 must be water in the rock, he began to excavate. The work had 

 proceeded very little way before he discovered that the original 

 borers had only-penetrated about two feet further than the well, 



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