On Artesian or Overflow'mg Wells. 123 



1691, gives ample proof of the art having been practised from 

 the earliest period in the environs of Modena. From thence it 

 spread to France, and, as mentioned in the late programme of 

 the Royal Society of Agriculture of Paris, the merit of their 

 introduction is due to Domenico Cassini, who was invited from 

 Italy to the court of Louis XIV, and was shortly after elected 

 a member of the Academy of Sciences. The earliest informa- 

 tion that we possess of any well being bored in the Comte 

 d'Artois, is, perhaps, that given by Belidor in his Science cle 

 ringenieur, hv. iv. chap. 13. He saw, in the year 1729, in 

 the church of St Andre, a well of this description, which gave 

 20 yards of water in an hour, and rose a yard above the sur- 

 face of the ground. Near Paris, according to M. Hericart de 

 Thury, the first Artesian well was sunk at Clicky, in the middle 

 of the last century. It reached the depth of 98 feet, and rose 

 four feet above the level of the Seine. In Germany, where 

 the art of boring mines has been known for more than a century, 

 and where Leopold (Schauplatz der Wasserbaukunst, Leipzig 

 1724), has applied them to the boring of fresh water springs, 

 this use has been made of them, but not so much as to the find- 

 ing of salt springs ; yet it may be expected, from the zeal with 

 which the search for Artesian wells is carried on in France, that 

 similar works will be carried on in other countries. 



POGGENDOKF. 



On the Botany of India, and the Facilities afforded for its inves- 

 tigation hy the East India Company. 



The natural sciences are not in the number of those which can 

 be advanced by meditation alone. The logician and the mathe- 

 matician may forward their studies by solitary reflection, and 

 the chemist may make brilhant discoveries with a very limited 

 apparatus; but the naturalist is continually obliged to have re- 

 course to the ocular inspection of numerous and diversified ob- 

 jects. At the time when Europe was as yet little explored, he 

 jiad only to make little excursions around his dwelling to ex- 

 tend the field of science ; but now Europe and the countries in 

 its vicinity may be looked upon as explored countries, and 

 science has risen to considerations of so high an order, that the 

 productions of the whole globe must be brought together to af- 



