64 THE SUBMARINE LEAKAGE, ETC. 



doubt that by the time they had been in use for a few months 

 they were not much thicker than those worn by the average 

 bushman. A well-known mercer in this city informs me that 

 twenty-five folds of the thickest moleskin go to an inch, and it 

 need be no matter for surprise thai a film of water supported by 

 a textile fabric one-twenty-fifth of an inch thick should be rapidly 

 dissipated into vapour between the fervour of the explorer 

 within and the ardour of the sun without. It may even be 

 remembered that history records how, in a much colder climate, 

 a party of invaders, after swimming a river which enviously 

 interposed between them and certain rich lands and fat beeves, 

 *' danced themselves dry to the pibroch's sound," notwith- 

 standing the considerable quantity of water carried to the 

 English shore in the voluminous accordeon-pleated garment 

 which they preferred! to moleskins or corduroys. 



Mr. Thomson, at the January meeting, suggested that the 

 disappearance of river water in crossing the bibulous beds, 

 ■which are now recognised as the principal intake beds of 

 artesian water in the West, might be imaginary, and it is need- 

 less to repeat that this disappearance is an observed fact, which 

 can be attested by any dweller in those regions. He cited the 

 bodily disappearance of rivers of which Monsieur E. A. Martel 

 gives many examples in his work, " Les Abimes." There is, how- 

 ever, no analogy between the disappearance of European 

 rivers in the caverns of limestone strata, and the 

 soakage of water into the sandstone and conglomerate beds 

 of the Australian interior, among which the occurrence of 

 elongated caverns is a physical impossibility. No thick beds of 

 limestone crop out at the base of the Cretaceous formation ; 

 and if they did, and if the rivers were engulfed by elongated 

 caverns, the artesian water would be found only where the 

 borer had the good fortune to strike the course of such under- 

 ground channels. As the system of boring pursued is (within 

 the defined limits of the Cretaceous formation) what is known 

 in mining language as " blind stabbing," there would be a 

 hundred unsuccessful for one successful bore if the artesian 

 water ran in narrow underground channels instead of being 

 almost everywhere present within the area represented by the 

 outcrop of the Lower Cretaceous. Underground rivers have 



