230 Notices respecting New Books. 



gratulated on the amount of highmindedness, vigour, and ability 

 which has been enlisted in its cause. Here and there the private 

 hope and aspiration of the lecturer crops out, and it is always a 

 noble hope and aspiration. We have in the majority of cases the 

 express qualities necessary to the founders of a new institution — 

 earnestness and enthusiasm, united to intellectual power sufficient to 

 control and regulate both. 



The author proceeds to consider the results and bearings of the 

 law of superposition, and the absurd and ruinous speculations which 

 have flowed from ignorance of that law. " At the very moment I 

 now write I have received a letter from Mr. Aveline, one of the 

 geologists of the Survey, in which he says, ' I have a narrow slip of 

 coal-measures running between the Permian and the new red beds, 

 and the old red sandstone that you saw at Bewdley. A person found 

 out the only place where the coal is well shown, and sunk a pit ; 

 but finding the coal worthless, he has gone a little way off on the old 

 red sandstone, where he is sinking after the most approved manner, 

 bricking his shaft round.' Near Trefgarn, Caermarthen," &c, pro- 

 ceeds the lecturer, " the black slates are dotted with shafts, borings, 

 and levels, sunk or driven in delusive searches for coal. While in 

 progress, the cry still is * the indications are good, go a little deeper;' 

 and the pit, the disappointment, and the ruin often deepen together, 

 till, abandoned in despair, the speculator is left to console himself 

 with the parting assurance, ' We are not to blame, — had you only 

 gone a little deeper.' Long after, when the wandering geologist 

 visits such spots, he is informed that the miners actually found coal, 

 but were bribed to hush it up by the coal-owners, jealous of their 

 markets." 



To Professor Ramsay's condemnation of exaggerated vertical sec- 

 tions we see no reason to subscribe. No man of any experience 

 could, we imagine, be misled in this way. In the exaggerated 

 section we are not required to trust our eyes, but can obtain, by 

 direct measurement with the scale, the precise thickness of the seam 

 of coal. In the natural section we doubt whether this precision is 

 possible ; the thickness of the finest line would, we imagine, amount 

 to some feet ; and thus, though the eye may be furnished with a 

 correct general impression, accurate measurement appears to be out 

 of the question. 



We shall here transcribe Professor Ramsay's interesting account 

 of the artesian well at Grenelle near Paris. " The nature of the 

 artesian wells is simple. If I take a bent tube and pour therein any 

 quantity of water, it will maintain a corresponding level on either 

 side ; and if I insert another tube shorter than the curved arms (we 

 shall suppose at the lowest point of the curve), then by virtue of a 

 law of hydrostatic pressure the water will rise in the inserted tube, 

 an equal amount being displaced in the curved arms on either side. 

 There it will rest. But if a constant sujjply be yielded to one or 

 both of the openings of the curved reservoir, then the water will 

 overflow at the mouth of the central inserted tube, which thus repre- 

 sents the boring of an artesian well. 



