152 OUR LAKES AND THEIR USES. 
genera altogether—many being even then alive. There was some- 
thing peculiar about the water, or these creatures would not have 
lived in it so long, and in ordinary water would have been destroyed 
by bacteria. 
Dr. Tuomas Drxson said, some time ago it was suggested as 
possible that the waters of Australia possessed medicinal properties, 
and Mr. Gipps has said that the waters of Lake George are 
purgative. A number of waters are used medicinally, but, up to 
the present time, there has been no systematic investigation as to 
whether the waters of this Colony have any such properties. At 
Cooma there are carbonated springs; at Berrima and Joadja Creek 
there are chalybeate springs, and possibly sulphur springs in other 
places; and near the Railway Station at Mittagong valuable 
medicinal chalybeate springs also exist. 3 
Mr.C.8. Witk1yson, F.G.S., said, “that if Mr. Gipps’s suggestions 
were carried out and the water purified, a large area 0 land could 
be made available, and the waters made use of in other localities. 
I examined the eastern side of the lake sometime ago, and i 
places round the margin there are high barriers of drift which run 
up into the valleys that drain the lake, showing that the lake at 
one time was a greater height. My impression was, after taking 
the levels round the margin of the lake, that it had at one time an 
outlet on the western side into the Lachlan. I think that there 
is an underground channel now buried. . 
The limestone masses in locality are not continuous, and in 
patches hardly extending more than } a mile in length; these 
beds, as a rule, run north and south, and not east and west. 
— 
es 
ehannel having become blocked at times, by cutting a few feet, the 
workmen have come upon the old channel. I don’t think that the 
ak ne formation will account in any way for the leakage oF 
[Three diagrams. ] 
