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Church — Underground Temperatures on the Comstock Lode. 291 
112° F. in temperature and often they are below this. But when 
from the lode rocks. That approaches more nearly 150° F. The 
vast body of water which has filled the Savage and Hale & 
Norcross mines for two years, and from which it is safe to say a 
million tons of water have been pumped within twelve months, 
gave me a temperature of 154° F. Even after being pumped 
to the surface through an iron pipe exposed, in the shaft of the 
Hale & Norcross, to a descending current of fresh air for more 
than a thousand feet, and then flowing for one or two hundred 
feet through an open sluice in a drain-tunnel which discharges 
into a measuring-box, the water in this box was found to have 
a temperature of no less than 145° F. 
But the water varies in temperature in different parts of the 
lode like the rock and the air. In the Hast crosscut 2000 foot 
level, of the Crown Point Mine, which is noted for its extreme 
eat, a small stream of water, after flowing for nearly one hun- 
dred and fifty feet over the bottom of the drift, was found to 
ave a temperature of 157° F. Here the drift was closed so 
that the water was but little exposed to evaporation. On the 
contrary, in other places the water is much less hot, but I be- 
lieve it is always hotter than the air, and in many cases it ap- 
pears to be hotter than the rock is found to be, except in 
branch dyke. This proved to be a very hot spot indeed. 
k, air and water were all so much above the usual limits of 
