On the Structure of the Delta of the Ganges. 325 



port of the Committee under whose zealous superintendence 

 they have been prosecuted, renders this quite unnecessary ; 

 but as the practical character of that document necessarily 

 precludes all speculations on the interesting results obtained 

 (especially as connected with the geology of the locality), the 

 following notes are intended to supply its deficiency in that 

 respect. 



It is now nearly six and thirty years ago (1804) since the 

 first attempt was made to supply the serious deficiency of 

 good fresh water in the town and vicinity of Calcutta by the 

 introduction of the method of boring. The same want of 

 success which attended this first effort, has attended each of 

 the numerous consecutive experiments which were subse- 

 quently instituted, and it is but a few weeks ago that the 

 most recent of the series was abandoned, after having been 

 carried to the depth of four hundred and eighty-one feet by 

 incessant labour, frequently during both night and day, for 

 upwards of four years. In every recorded case the cause of 

 failure has been of mechanical and not of natural origin, 

 arising either from the very unsatisfactory character of the 

 apparatus employed, the breaking of the rods in the bore, 

 the slipping of the joints of the iron tubing, the deflection 

 of the direction of the bore from the perpendicular, or some 

 similar casualty.* The infant state of the art of Boring, and 

 the difficulty of reducing its details to the comprehension of 

 native workmen, to whom the whole was alike novel and 

 strange, furnish us with ready explanations of the earlier fai- 

 lures, and these are scarcely in any way calculated to excite 

 our remark, but it magnifies the difficulties of the undertak- 

 ing, when we find that though all the modern improvements 

 of tools, apparatus, and materials, were combined with in- 

 creased experience and dexterity on the part of those em- 

 ployed, success could not even then be attained. The in- 



* Vide note A. 



