138 E. F. PITTMAN. 



and flow at all the bores, but in New South Wales, at any 

 rate, this work is now being thoroughly carried out under 

 the superintendence of Mr. L. A. B. Wade, Chief Engineer 

 for Water Supply etc. Isopotential lines are being sys- 

 tematically charted, the intake beds are being surveyed, 

 and, when this is done, it is intended to take continuous 

 gaugings of large streams where they enter and where 

 they leave the porous rocks, with the object of determining 

 the amount of water lost by percolation. 



It may be confidently reaffirmed that the great Australian 

 water-bearing basin is a true artesian area, that the water 

 of the flowing wells had a meteoric and not a plutonic 

 origin, and that hydraulic pressure is the chief cause of its 

 ascent. 



In conclusion, I venture to think that Professor Gregory's 

 choice of a metaphor, in the title which he has given his 

 book, is not altogether a happy one. When the heart 

 ceases to beat, decay of all the other members of the body 

 speedily follows. But if the heart of Australia, as symbolised 

 by the desert country around Lake Eyre, be really dead, as 

 suggested by the distinguished author, it is some consola- 

 tion to know that there is still a fair amount of vitality in 

 the head and limbs of our national body, as represented by 

 the more fertile districts nearer to the coastline. 



Postscript. 

 The rocks termed Triassic in this paper include the lower 

 water-bearing sandstone (of fresh-water origin) of the great 

 Australian artesian basin. In Queensland they are known 

 as the Trias- Jura, and are there overlain in places by 

 the Blytliesdale Bray stone, a porous marine sandstone, 

 which forms the basal bed of the Lower Cretaceous system. 

 The Blytliesdale Braystone was probably a littoral deposit 

 along the eastern margin of the Cretaceous sea, and it may 

 not extend very far in the direction of its dip. It is not 



