470 AKTIFICIAL SPEINGS. 



be more springs and rivulets proceeding from the mountains tlian 

 from the rest of the earth ; which is for no other cause but that the 

 rocks and mountains do retain the water of the rains like vessels 

 of brass. And the said waters falling upon the said mountains 

 descend continually through the earth, and through crevices, and 

 stop not till they find some place that is bottomed with stone or 

 close and thick rocks ; and they rest upon such bottom until they 

 find some channel or other manner of issue, and then they flow 

 out in springs or brooks or rivers, according to the greatness of 

 the reservoirs and of the outlets thereof." * 



After a full exposition of his theory, Pahssy proceeds to de- 

 scribe his method of creating springs, which is substantially the 

 same as that lately proposed by Babinet in the following terms : 

 *' Choose a piece of ground containing four or five acres, with 8 

 sandy soil, and with a gentle slope to determine the flow of the 

 water. Along its upper line, dig a trench five or six feet deep 

 and six feet wide. Level the bottom of the trench, and make it im- 

 permeable by paving, by macadamizing, by bitumen, or, more sim- 

 ply and cheaply, by a layer of clay. By the side of this trench dig 

 another, and throw the earth from it into the first, and so on until 

 you have rendered the 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 promote 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." f Babinet states 

 that the whole amount of precipitation on a reservoir of the pro- 

 posed area, in the climate of Paris, would be about 13,000 cubic 



* (Euvres de Palissy, etc., p. 166. Palissy's method has recently been tried 

 with good success in various parts of France. 



f 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 foimt- 

 ains 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 

 ^eat 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 1 " (P. 234.) 



