FUTURE NEEDS FOR DEVELOPMENT 249 



to scale in the days when the "physical laws governing under- 

 ground water and its subterranean progress" were considered 

 to be "irregular and unknowable to any certainty," and when 

 the water was "changeable and uncontrollable in character 

 and subject to secret and incomprehensible influences." 18 



"Percolating waters" were once defined as "vagrant, wan- 

 dering drops moving by gravity in any and every direction 

 along the lines of least resistance." 19 Even today the common 

 ideas concerning percolating waters seem to come from the 

 operations of a common kitchen utensil, which simulates part 

 of the hydrologic cycle by providing intermittent "precipita- 

 tion," infiltration and percolation of water through coffee 

 grounds, and in which the percolated water then loses its iden- 

 tity in the common pot. Some legal treatises have differen- 

 tiated among percolating waters tributary to surface water- 

 courses, springs, and to underground reservoirs; and "diffused 

 percolations," which are evidently the "vagrant" waters, hav- 

 ing no known destination. Artesian waters are sometimes dis- 

 tinguished from "percolating" waters, sometimes included as 

 a subdivision of the class. In some states the appropriation 

 doctrine governs in rights to ground water in "defined under- 

 ground streams," or in artesian aquifers, but rights to "per- 

 colating" waters are inherent in land ownership under the 

 common-law doctrine. Yet when the hydrology is investi- 

 gated, it may well be shown that the "underground streams" 

 or the artesian aquifers depend upon the "percolating water" 

 for replenishment, or vice versa. 



The tendency to consider ground water and surface water 

 under separate categories, in statutes, in court decisions, in 

 filing of water rights, may also lead to unsettling of established 

 water rights. Rather generally in the western states the waters 

 first used were from streams, and the oldest rights are there- 

 fore in the base flow of those streams — the flow sustained 

 largely by ground water. Thus many surface-water rights have 



is Kinney, C. S., A Treatise on the Law of Irrigation and Water Rights, 

 vol. 2, p. 2115, quoting an early Vermont case. 



is City of Los Angeles v. Hunter (105 Pac. 755), 1909. 



