430 Reviews—Stanford’s Geography—Australian Geology. 
of Queensland, in connection with the underground waters of the 
plains, must needs confess to a certain amount of disappointment 
that such elaborate calculations have only a partial and limited 
relation to the phenomena of the Flowing Wells as a whole. The 
difficulty of uniform explanation increases in proportion to the extent 
of country exploited, and this extent, in the case of Hast Central 
Australia, is so immense that many causes may conduce to the uprise 
of water in the innumerable boreholes sunk throughout this vast 
region. Still, the hydrostatic or ordinary artesian theory may be 
applicable in the majority of those cases where the well-water is 
fresh and of normal temperature. There seems a reasonable degree 
of probability that much of this water is really meteoric, and therefore 
perennial so long as present climatic conditions prevail. The stale 
waters of old seas such as the Cretaceous, or waters of ‘ plutonic 
origin,’ can be of little service from an economic point of view, and 
therefore the waste of these is not of much consequence, though their 
discharge in the form of flowing wells may tend to increase the 
already too great salinity of the surface. No doubt it must be a sad 
disappointment for the Australian prospector, after spending thousands 
of pounds in boring thousands of feet, to obtain a mixture of salt and 
water for his pains. Nevertheless, such mishaps sometimes occur in 
the old country, as was the case recently at Lincoln, where a costly 
borehole sunk to a depth of slightly over 2,000 feet brought up 
a copious supply from the Trias, which, it was hoped, would 
purify itself by degrees; but at present the only use for such 
a genuine artesian overflow would be the establishment of warm 
salt-water baths in an inland city. 
Westralia.—We have already seen that the immense territory 
included under this name consists mainly of Archean and Old 
Palseozoic rocks, with a coastal frmge of newer rocks which runs 
from 20 to 30 miles in width ere the face of the plateau is reached. 
From its western edge this plateau is a broad undulating tract, mostly 
between 1,000 and 2,000 feet in elevation up to the confines of 
South Australia on the east. Except im the extreme south where the 
Stirling Range attains 3,640 feet, and in the far north where Mount 
Bruce rises to 3,800 feet, the features of the country are extremely 
monotonous. The main interest in the Archean plateau centres in 
its mineral wealth, since all the goldfields of Westralia occur in it. 
Harry Page Woodward divided the Archzean rocks ito six parallel 
belts. No. 1 forms the base of the coastal district on the west, and 
the greater part of this belt is covered by later deposits. No. 2 is 
exposed in the scarp that forms the west face of the plateau. No. 3 
is the first granite belt, and is devoid of minerals. No. 4 is the first 
auriferous belt. No. 5 is the second granite belt. No. 6, or the 
second auriferous belt, is the easternmost of the series, and it is in 
this that the famous goldfields of Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie occur. 
The rocks of both auriferous belts consist mainly of schists, of which 
the most important is a series of amphibolites, and there are also 
numerous dykes of granite, diorite, and porphyrite. ‘‘ Bands of the 
amphibolites have been so crushed that they often resemble altered 
slates, and others have been silicified into jasperoid, and mineralized 
into the rich lodes of the Kalgoorlie goldfield.”’ 
