486 ARTIFICIAL SPRINGS. 
subsoil of the whole parcel impermeable to rain-water. Build 
a wall along the lower line with an aperture in the middle for 
the water, and plant fruit or other low trees upon the whole, 
to shade the ground and check the currents of air which pro- 
mote evaporation. This will infallibly give you a good spring 
which will flow without intermission, and supply the wants of 
a whole hamlet or a large chateau.” * Babinet states that the 
whole amount of precipitation on a reservoir of the proposed 
area, in the climate of Paris, would be about 13,000 cubic 
yards, not above one half of which, he thinks, would be lost, 
and, of course, the other half would remain available to supply 
the spring. JI much doubt whether this expectation would be 
realized in practice, in its whole extent ; for if Babinet is right 
in supposing that the summer rain is wholly evaporated, the 
winter rains, being much less in quantity, would hardly suftice 
to keep the earth saturated and give off so large a surplus. 
The method of Palissy, though, as I have said, similar in 
principle to that of Babinet, would be cheaper of execution, 
and, at the same time, more efficient. He proposes the con- 
struction of relatively small filtering receptacles, into which he 
would conduct the rain falling upon a large area of rocky hill- 
side, or other sloping ground not readily absorbing water. 
This process would, in all probability, be a very successful, as 
well as an inexpensive, mode of economizing atmospheric pre- 
cipitation, and compelling the rain and snow to form perennial 
fountains at will. 
*BaBINet, Etudes et Lectures sur les Sciences d’ Observation, ii., p. 225. 
Our author precedes his account of his method with a complaint which 
most men who indulge in thinking have occasion to repeat many times in 
the course of their lives. ‘‘I will explain to my readers the construction of 
artificial fountains according to the plan of the famous Bernard de Palissy, 
who, a hundred and fifty [three hundred] years ago, came and took away 
from me, a humble academician of the nineteenth century, this discovery 
which I had taken a great deal of pains to make, It is enough to discourage 
all invention when one finds plagiarists in the past as well as in the future! ” 
(P. 224.) 
