484 ARTIFICIAL SPRINGS. 
from the Libyan sky, and that the showers which are now 
wasted on the sea, or so often deluge Southern Europe with 
destructive inundation, would in part be condensed over the 
arid wastes of Africa, and thus, without further aid from man, 
bestow abundance on regions which nature seems to have con- 
demned to perpetual desolation. 
An equally bold speculation, founded on the well-known 
fact that the temperature of the earth and of its internal waters 
increases as we descend beneath the surface, has suggested that 
artesian wells might supply heat for industrial and domestic 
purposes, for hot-house cultivation, and even for the local 
amelioration of climate. The success with which Count Lar- 
darel has employed natural hot springs for the evaporation 
of water charged with boracic acid, and other fortunate appli- 
cations of the heat of thermal sources, lend some countenance 
to the latter project; but both must, for the present, be ranked 
among the vague possibilities of science, not regarded as prob- 
able future triumphs of man oyer nature. 
Artificial Springs. 
A more plausible and inviting scheme is that of the crea- 
tion of perennial springs by husbanding rain and snow water, 
storing it up in artificial reservoirs of earth, and filtering it 
through purifying strata, in analogy with the operations of 
nature. The sagacious Palissy—starting from the theory that 
all springs are primarily derived from precipitation, and rea- 
soning justly on the accumulation and movement of water in 
the earth—proposed to reduce theory to practice, and to imi- 
tate the natural processes by which rain is absorbed by the 
earth and given out again in running fountains. “When I 
had long and diligently considered the cause of the springing 
of natural fountains and the places where they be wont to 
issue,” says he, “I did plainly perceive, at last, that they do 
proceed and are engendered of nought but the rains. And it 
is this, look you, which hath moved me to enterprise the gath- 
