30 VREDENBURG : RECENT ARTESIAN EXPERIMENTS IN INDIA. 



distance from the hills, the retarding influence of friction must come 

 conspicuously into play. Along the southern edge of the plains the 

 conditions cannot be regarded as favourable, for all along the low 

 hills that limit the alluvium in that direction, there is no slope of 

 gravel forming an intake area comparable to the "bh^bar" of the 

 Himalayan talus, and in the western portion of the district, in the 

 neighbourhood of the Aravallis, the amount of rainfall is small. As 

 to the underground reservoirs fed by the Himalayan " bhdbar " it is 

 not probable that they stretch right across to the southern boundary 

 of the alluvium. All these probabilities were very distinctly formu- 

 lated by Mr. Medlicott in discussing the possibilities of the Indo-Gan- 

 o-etic alluvium. It is to the fact of their being situated too far in the 

 midst of the alluvial formation or too near its southern limit, that he 

 attributed the unsatisfactory results of the experiments undertaken 

 in Calcutta in 1836 and at Bhiwani in 1877. One of the conse- 

 quences of the Umballa boring carried out from 1869 to ^J 2 was to 

 draw attention to the enormous thickness of the Gangetic alluvium. 

 In order to account for the facts, it became necessary to admit that 

 the floor upon which the Gangetic alluvium was laid down must have 

 been subsiding simultaneously with the deposition of the strata. The 

 depression was probably formed at the same time as the upheaval of 

 the Himalayas, both phenomena being the outcome of the same set 

 of causes. It may be necessary, therefore, to bore through an enor- 

 mous thickness of clay-beds similar to those met with in the Umballa 

 borino- before striking any permeable sands in communication with 

 the coarse gravels of the " bh^bar " zone. The Umballa boring was 

 not continued beyond a depth of 701 feet, and, as an experiment 

 therefore, it was not complete. 



The Lucknow boring performed in the years 1888 to 1890 has 

 further confirmed the fact of the enormous thick. 



The Lucknow boring. , . 



ness of the alluvium, but it has also established 

 the correctness of Mr. Medlicolt's view as to the existence of deep- 

 seated artesian water, for, between the depths of 1,189 an ^ 1,202 feet, 

 ( 30 ) 



