NOTES OF A JOURNEY ON THE DARLING. 63 
it to the surface by boring in the Western plains. The materials 
at my command are not numerous, being very little besides Mr. 
Russell’s rainfall observations and calculations as to the outflow 
of the Darling, and what I have been able to collect myself in a 
journey of about five months’ duration, and they apply to a vast 
area of country, so that I am not at all sure that the time has yet 
come for arranging them and endeavouring to show what lesson 
they teach. But, on the ground that no harm can be done by 
opinions based on even a few facts, I have decided to make the 
g rtal , 
Russell undertook to draw up the circular, and I referred the Min- 
ister to him as a guarantee that the object in view was of some 
their 
received a reply informing me that the Honorable the Minister 
for Mines did not think the appraisers should be delayed in their 
work, and for that reason would not forward the circular. How- ~ 
ever, as allthe runs have to be appraised every five years, it is to 
hoped that some future Minister may be advised to request the 
appraisers to make notes of all natural springs and wells giving @ 
large supply of water in the Darling watershed, with the depth of 
the wells, depth at which water stands, whether wes by dry 
. UL 
obtaining water in large quantities in any particular part of the 
delay them to any appreciable extent. They would, in fact, give — 
scientific men, who are not, as a rule, to be found on the frontiers 
of civilization, an opportunity of attempting the solution of a 
problem which is of the very greatest importance to this and other 
Solonies, On the supposition that there is a great drainage system 
under the Western plains, taking away to the ocean that part of 
the rainfall which is not accounted for either by evaporation or by 
the outflow of the Darling River (and this seems to pra: 
