and Spouting' Fountains. 241 



nezv ones. For this purpose, all that is necessary is to sink a 

 pit fifteen or twenty feet, having a diameter of about ten feet, 

 in the thin and vertical strata, the summits of which appear on 

 the surface. The name of entonnoirs (funnels) is given to these 

 pits. * * * ♦ It is," adds Saussure, " the waters absorbed by 

 all these entonnoirs, that are observed to rise from the earth, and 

 form a large spring, which is also called Orbe, at the distance of 

 two miles below the southern extremity of the lake." In this 

 passage of two miles, the absorbed waters descend 680 feet. 



A manufacturer of potato-starch at Villetaneuse, a small vil- 

 lage about three miles from St Denis, in the winter 1832-3, by 

 means of a pit sunk to the depth of certain absorbing stratified 

 beds, got rid of not less than 16,000 gallons of impure water 

 per day, the stench from which had given rise to serious com- 

 plaints, which probably would have compelled him to give up 

 his establishment. After six iponths of daily absorption, no- 

 thing was found at the bottom of the pit except sand, and this 

 has been uniformly the case from the first. 



By the same kind of process, the superintendents of the 

 common sewers of Bondy freed themselves, every twenty-four 

 hours, «f about 3000 cubic feet of water, which impeded their 

 operations. 



I shall close this subject by publishing the very ingenious 

 use to which M. Mulot has applied the absorbing properties of 

 gravelly strata, in the solution of a problem which was of the 

 greatest importance to the neighbourhood of St Denis. 



The water of a fountain which had been opened in La Place 

 de la Foste aux Chevaux in that town, became, during the sum- 

 mer, an excellent instrument of cleanliness, but frost coming 

 with the winter, ice was formed in the public ways, and very 

 much endangered all passage. The inconvenience was so great, 

 that it almost led to the abandoning the idea of opening a new 

 fountain on the Place aux Gueldres, when M. Mulot conceived 

 the idea which I shall explain in very few words. 



The water, of a very superior quality, which comes from a 

 bed 200 feet deep, is made to ascend in a metallic tube of a cer- 

 tain diameter. A tube, which is considerably larger., envelopes 

 this first, and descends 170 feet to a reservoir of very good 

 water, though not quite so excellent as the other. It is exclu- 



