380 REPORT—1885. 
Eleventh Report of the Committee, consisting of Professor E., HULL, — 
Dr. H. W. CrosskEy, Captain DouGLas GALTON, Professors J. — 
Prestwich and G. A. Lesour, and Messrs. JAMES GLAISHER, 
EK. B. MartTen, G. H. Morton, JAMES ParRKER, W. PENGELLY, | 
JAMES PuanT, I. Roperts, Fox-Srranaways, T. 8. STOOKE, — 
G. J. Symons, W. Toptey, TyLpren-Wricut, E. WETHERED, 
W. Wuiraker, and C. E. DE RANcE (Secretary), appointed for 
the purpose of investigating the Circulation of Underground 
Waters in the Permeable Formations of England and Wales, 
and the Quantity and Character of the Water supplied to 
various Towns and Districts from these Formations. Drawn 
wp by C. KE, De Rance. 
Your Committee have not been able to include in the present report — 
information which would be of considerable value in drawing up a final 
report on the result of their twelve years’ labour. They therefore con- 
sider they will best carry out the instructions which you gave them in 
1874 by continuing their investigations for another year. That this should 
be done is the more important from the fact that the present dry season, 
following the dry summer and autumn of last year, has, by drying up 
surface springs, and by the diminution of streams, exhibited the importance 
of the deeper-seated underground stores, but at the same time, has shown 
that, in estimating the quantities of water to be derived from such sources, 
it is of the highest importance to obtain data as to the yield of deep wells 
and borings in years of drought, and to obtain accurate knowledge of 
the extent of the depression of the level of underground waters. Your 
Committee had hoped that observations made in the United States or in 
Canada on the filtering powers of sandstones, the influence of barometric 
pressure and other changes on the height of underground waters, and on 
the influence of earthquakes, might have been obtained, but they regret 
that no such communications have been received. 
Mr. C. E. Peek, F.R.Met.Soc., of Rousdon Observatory, three miles 
west of Lyme Regis, has offered to carry out observations on his well, 
which is 200 feet in depth and 500 feet above the sea, as regards tem- 
perature and changes of level due to alteration of atmospheric pressure or 
astronomical causes. Mr. I. Roberts, F.G.S., of Maghull, has continued 
his observations in this direction, but prefers to communicate them as an 
independent paper to the Royal Society of London. Mr. Roberts’s ex- 
periments on the action of sandstone in extracting the salts of saline 
solutions, published as an appendix to the Underground Water Report 
presented at Dublin in 1878, have been attacked by Mr. William Ripley 
Nichols, Memb. Boston (U.S.) Soc. of C.E.,! who considers ‘that the 
salt solution placed on top of the block forced before it the water already 
contained in the pores of the stone, and mixed with it but little... . If 
the stone had been perfectly dry there would have been no effect observed, — 
unless, as is the case with most sandstones, the rock actually contained — 
some salt to start with, in which case the first portion of the liquid that | 
came through would contain a trifle more salt than the subsequent — 
, 
1 Journal of the Association of Engineering Societies, 1884, vol. iii. p. 144. 
