WATER SUPPLY IN THE INTERIOR OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 101 
proportion of successes to failures becomes gradually less. The 
most important fact brought out a oe Abbott’s ait is that, on 
Liverpool Plains, the sand beds are the water-bearing strata, 
water (described by W. E. Abbott, Journal of the Royal Society, 
, 1880), and all the other good wells in the most widely 
separated parts of our western plains, have their source of supply 
in the sand drifts. The Government borings, as far as I have 
seen accounts of them, seem to support the inference that these 
sand drifts are the only sources of fresh water in the west. In 
many cases the water-bearing sand beds are so fine-grained as to 
make it difficult, if not impossible, to keep wells or tubes from 
filling up—generally finer far away from the main range than close 
to it. These sands are interstratified with the saliferous clays at 
all depths, are not always quite ae though never, as far as 
T have seen, very much inclined, an e to the surface in many 
places. That the fresh water passes ser the surface through 
these sands, and has by reason of their permeability dissolved out 
of them the greater part of the soluble salts which they in common 
with the clays may have originally contained is, I think, tolerably 
certain. Probably these sand beds are not continuous over any 
large area of country included in the western plains, nor are they 
likely to be me connected with each other ; but in those that con- 
tain fresh water there must necessarily be some connection with 
the surface pera which they obtain fresh water, and with some 
outlet, either through the rivers or underground to the sea, by 
which the soluble salts are carried off, or have been carried off in 
the past. If this were not so, the water contained in the sands 
as it is in the clay beds, where it has been imprisoned by the 
aie“ erent of the strata, would be salt. 
must have been for a long time a tolerably errs cireu- 
lation of one through the strata where fresh water 
ul * 
IP al 
that in every one of them where water was found in the clay 
it was salt, and I think at least five out of six wells sunk 
further west on the Darling to a depth of 100 feet or under 
reach salt water. In one case, I knew of nineteen wells sunk 
on one station, and only one reached fresh water. Of course 
es, 
there remains without any outlet; but a little consideration willshow 
that such a lake, if it were possible, would have the same character 
