28 H. C. RUSSELL. 
We have thus good reason to expect that a permanent water 
supply, sufficient for the wants of that prosperous community, 
will shortly be found, and not a moment before it is wanted, for 
we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the rainfall there is far 
too uncertain to be depended upon. The’ present distress, is the 
outcome of little more than one year’s drought, and within the 
past thirteen years, over which rainfall observations have been 
made, there have been several droughts, one of which lasted three 
years. In the first year, 1882, only 9:11 inches rain fell; the 
next year only 5°33 inches fell, and this was the driest year ever 
known there, and the third year, 1884, only 8-62 inches fell, the 
average for the three years being only 7:69 inches. Such a 
drought, by reason of its length and the intensity of it in the 
middle year, would be far more disastrous than the present one, 
and it is only reasonable to provide for contingencies that have 
happened recently, and may happen again at any time. The 
provision would in my opinion be better made by wells tapping the 
artesian waters, the existence of which there seems no reason to 
doubt, than by a supply from the Darling River, which when 
most wanted, will almost certainly be contaminated by animal, 
vegetable, and mineral impurities, to such an extent as to render 
it unfit for use. 
At the end of the volume ‘ Annual Report of the Department 
of Mines and Agriculture,” there is a very valuable report by Mr. 
J. W. Boultbee, the officer in charge of the Water Conservation 
Branch, on the work done in the search for artesian water. It 
gives short notes of well-boring in the Northern hemisphere, 
general notes on legislation in reference to wells, regulations, etc., 
list of wells, public and private, in Queensland, also accounts of 
the work done in Victoria and South Australia. In reference to 
New South Wales Mr. Boultbee says: “In our own Colony the 
question has been for years before the Department, attention heing 
in the first instance drawn to it by a successful well: sunk on 
Kallara Station by Mr. David Brown, in 1879. This well was . 
sunk in proximity to a mud spring, and at a depth of one hundred — 
