ARTESIAN WATER IN N. S. WALES AND QUEENSLAND. ALT 
Dividing Range, and at a distance of fifty to one hundred miles 
westwards of the foothills. This fact is partly due to percolation 
and partly perhaps, to evaporation and transpiration through 
the leaves of trees. 
The statements of Mr. H. G. McKinney, M. Inst.c.E., Chief 
Engineer for Water Conservation and Irrigation, New South 
Wales,* are worthy of being quoted here :—‘‘ When the discharge 
of the river (Macquarie) at Dubbo was 1144 cubic feet per second, 
at Warren it was only 52 cubic feet, and when the discharge at 
Dubbo fell to 20 cubic feet per second the current ceased at about 
eighteen miles above Warren. I also showed that of the total 
loss of water between these places, sixteen and a half per cent. in 
the former case, and thirty-eight per cent. in the latter, might be 
due to evaporation, while by absorption the trees on the river 
bank could account for 125 cubic feet per second. The opinion 
which I formed regarding percolation in that part of the Macquarie 
was that at least, when that river is low, very little loss is due to 
that cause. It is in fact unlikely that any considerable proportion 
of the waters of our western rivers is lost by percolation, except- 
ing in the higher parts of their courses for the natural tendency 
of a river flowing through alluvium is to tamp up all interstices 
in its channel.” 
On the other hand the tunnel carried below the channel of the 
Macquarie River at Bathurst, which tapped the water in the 
extensive gravel beds below the level of the river yielded large 
volumes of water without any evidence of the supply becoming 
diminished. In the opinion of the author there is a considerable 
quantity of water in these gravels which underlie the channels of 
the modern rivers, and perhaps as much (if not more), water 
drains through them into the delta gravels formed by the Cretace- 
ous rivers, and so into the vast sand beds of the Cretaceous Form- 
ation further west, as drains into all the outcropping edges of the 
—~ 
* Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, Vol. 1., p- 
399—Rivers of New South Wales by H. G. McKinney, M. Inst. C.E. 
A a—Decr. 6, 1893. 
