68 THE SUBMARINE LEAKAGE, ETC. 



supposition is such a failure imaginable. But we know that 

 the strata do annually imbibe an almost incalculably large 

 amount of water ; therefore they are partially emptied before 

 the periodical rain? set in ; and therefore the depths of the 

 ocean are no more filled up with glue than they are with rose 

 water. 



At the ]\Iay meeting of the Geographical Society, Messrs. 

 Gregory and Thomson said they had seen no direct evidence of 

 submarine leakage of artesian water. No more have I, as the 

 depths of the sea are inaccessible. I have not seen it, but I 

 believe in it, on evidence similar to that on which I believe in 

 the existence of Fiji, of which Mr. Thomson and others have 

 furnished us with credible information. Granting that there may 

 be another explanation of the fresh water bubbling up through 

 the salt water of the Australian Bight, there is (besides the 

 disappearance of inland rivers) some direct evidence pointing in 

 the same direction. For instance, I have lately been informed 

 by a thoroughly reliable shipmaster, that there is a spot far 

 out in the Gulf of Carpentaria where almost fresh water can be 

 taken up in a bucket, and that by no means when there is any 

 reason to suspect that local rains or flood-waters from the Gulf 

 country have anything to do with it. Here, at least, there are 

 not, as in the Australian Bight, any Tertiary rocks, which may 

 be suspected of exuding the fresh water ; and the Normanton 

 bore, practically on the edge of the Gulf, and sunk from a level 

 of about 30 feet above it, struck the artesian water at a depth 

 of 1988 feet (say 1950 feet below sea level), "when the drill 

 got out of blue shale into sandstone," and entered tiie under- 

 lying granite at 2291 feet, and there is no ground of assuming 

 that this is the lowest part of the basin. 



]\Iv colleague, Mr. A. Gibb Maitland, read before this Society 

 on the 17th April last the first instalment of a paper on 

 " Extra-Australian Artesian Basins," in which he demonstrated 

 that the principal artesian water-basins of the world " are not," 

 as he says, " disposed in the shape of these ideal basins, 

 sections of which have done duty for many years in geological 

 manuals," " Both on the coastal and the great interior regions " 

 [of America] , says Mr. Maitland, " the water-carrying beds are 

 so arranged that there is only one side of a synclinal trough, the 



