414 EDWARD F. PITTMAN. 
adapted to act as intake beds for artesian water. Their dip is to 
the west, under the Downs, at angles varying from 2° to 20°, and 
_ the rainfall over the area of their outcrop is high, being about 
forty inches per annum. Oontinuing now along the western 
railway line we find that there is a gradual fall in the surface of 
the Downs between Toowoomba and Roma, which is situated 
two hundred and seventeen miles further west. Thus while the 
altitude of Toowoomba railway station is 1,921 feet, that of Roma 
is 978 feet! The altitude of Gowrie Junction, only seven miles 
west of Toowoomba is 1,577 feet, or only slightly more than that 
of Spring Bluff, where the porous sandstone, a specimen of which 
is exhibited, outcrops. 
It appears to me, therefore, that there is an area of country 
having a width of about two hundred miles and lying to the east 
of the outcrop of the Blythesdale Braystone, which, though 
hitherto unprospected, possesses all the conditions which are 
regarded as necessary to the occurrence of artesian water, and in 
view of the recent discovery of a fine supply at Moree, in rocks 
of the same age as the Ipswich coal measures, I am of opinion 
that the probabilities of artesian water being obtained in large 
quantities, to the east of the outcrop of the Blythesdale Braystone, 
Are very strong indeed. 
T have already quoted from Mr. Jack’s paper read before the 
Brisbane meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advance 
‘ment of Science, in which he drew attention to the porous nature 
of certain beds in the Trias-Jura formation, and to the probability 
of the water absorbed by them reinforcing the artesian supplies 
of the Lower Cretaceous formation. I not only concur in this 
' opinion but would even go so far as to suggest that the spi 
Strata of the Trias-Jura formation may constitute the chief storage 
beds of the artesian water supply of Australia. 
I am inclined to think that many of the successful bores in 
both New South Wales and Queensland may have obtained their 
pnts Har or eee RE aes ee 
1 Queensland Railways, Time Table. 
