106 E. F. PITTMA.N. 



The Hon. Dr. G. Otis Smith, Director of the United 

 States Geological Survey, writes under date July 13, 1907: 1 



" The questions raised have been referred to Mr. M. L. Fuller, 

 who has had charge of artesian water investigations in a consider- 

 able portion of the country for a number of years. His statements 

 are as follows : — /The greatest distance which water is known to 

 travel underground in the United States is in the St. Peter sand- 

 stone, the water entering the intake area in the southern part of 

 the State of Wisconsin at an altitude of about 875 feet, and flow- 

 ing at an altitude of 575 feet in Ontral Kentucky 450 miles to the 

 southeast. In an open porous sandstone of this type the loss of 

 head is very slight, amounting to only about 67 feet per mile, 

 and there is no reason to believe that the water might not pene- 

 trate and give flows at a distance of 1,000 miles or more if the 

 porous beds were continuous.'" 



In view therefore of the fact that water is known to 

 travel underground in America for a distance of 450 miles, 

 it is difficult to understand why the possibility of its flow- 

 ing COO miles in Australia, under analogous conditions, 

 should be so emphatically denied. 



Gregory is of opinion that in ascribing the rise of the 

 water in our Australian wells to hydrostatic pressure 

 Australian geologists have underrated the resistance to 

 the flow of water through rocks due to friction," and he 

 considers that as the water has to percolate, not through 

 open tubes, but through the very minute pores of rocks 

 which are under the pressure of some thousands of feet of 

 overlying material, friction would soon obliterate the whole 

 of the head. 



If this opinion were correct it would be impossible to 

 accept the theory of hydrostatic pressure to account for 

 flowing wells in any of the larger artesian basins of the 



1 Personal communication. 



- The Dead Heart of Australia, p. 300. 



