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The Carlisle Water Supply. — An amusing note on this 

 subject appears in the "Carlisle Journal" of October loth, 1884. 

 The writer comments on the "ancient and fish-like smell" which 

 occasionally characterizes the Carlisle Water Supply, and notices 

 its likeness to a similar shortcoming in that of Manchester, where 

 it has. been found to result from the presence of multitudes of 

 pond-snails. These creatures "deposited their spawn on the sides 

 and bottoms of the reservoirs, and the decomposition of this mass 

 imparted the taint to the water." The remedy applied at Man- 

 chester has been the introduction into the reservoirs of trout and 

 char to keep down the snails ; and the writer in the " Carlisle 

 Journal" suggests — though somewhat doubtfully — a similar plan 

 at Carlisle. Fish, however, and their products, are, in their turn, 

 as liable to decompose as snails or snail-spawn, while the intro- 

 duction of otters to keep down the fish hardly promises to prove a 

 satisfactory settlement of that difficulty. Carlisle, however, has 

 many geological advantages over Manchester, inasmuch as the 

 structure of its neighbourhood insures an ample supply of water 

 from the sinking of an artesian well ; water infinitely superior in 

 quality to that now obtained from the Eden. Such a well, sunk 

 in the district of Harker, would tap the copious supply of water in 

 the Kirklinton and St. Bees Sandstones, beneath the surface beds, 

 and provide Carlisle with a supply of water second to none in the 

 kingdom. 



T. V. H. 



Section North of Silloth. — Mr. Goodchild has sent me an 

 account of a recently exposed section on the coast a little north of 

 Silloth. The low foreshore consists of tough boulder clay. Above 

 it rises a belt of fine clay, covered in its turn by blown sand, which 

 is now being cut back at a faster rate than the tougher clay below. 

 The most interesting point about this section was the fact pointed out 

 to Mr. Goodchild by Dr. Leitch of Silloth, that the surface of the 

 fine clay had been regularly drained, and that it exhibited the most 

 unmistakeable evidences of the action of the plough, the furrows 



