ARTESIAN WATER IN WESTERN QUEENSLAND. 
339 
Referring to Queensland localities, Mr. James Tolson says* : — 
<c I have seen 10 inches of rain fall within 24 hours on the high desert 
country between TJanda and the Cape River Gold Field, and not a drop 
run off the surface, the whole of it having been absorbed by the 
porous formation. I have also ridden through Torrens Creek after 
its being uncrossable for a week at the Lammermoor Crossing, and 
with a width of 70 yards, when the water was well above the saddle- 
flaps, and 40 miles lower down on the same day the stream was not 
more than 30 yards wide, and not up to the horse’s knees ” The first 
part of the above shows the absorbent qualities of the Desert Sand- 
stone, and the second of the Blythesdale beds. 
Mr. Russell’s figures, if applicable to Queensland, prove more 
than the absorption of the water by porous strata. If they are 
reliable — and 1 see no reason to doubt their accuracy — and again, if 
they are applicable to Queensland (which is very likely, considering 
the exceptionally bibulous character of the Blythesdale Braystone), 
the bibulous rocks at the base of the Lower Cretaceous must 
annually, or at least every wet season, absorb an amount of water 
which would severely tax my arithmetic. And if the bibulous rocks 
absorb such an amount of water, they must first have been drained of 
w T ater to a like extent. How would such a drainage be effected ? 
Certainly not by the bores, or there would have been a difference in 
the character of the rivers of the district before and after the com- 
mencement of boring ; and the output of the bores, great as it is, 
is, after all, a mere bagatelle compared to the amount which would be 
u lost ” by the rivers of Queensland, supposing them to behave like 
the Darling. This reductio ad alsurdmn need not be further dwelt on. 
Certainly the drainage of the Blythesdale braystone is not effected by 
the bores. The only conceivable agent capable of effecting it is the 
leakage in the sea bottom. Thus, although we have no direct proof of 
the latter, I hold that it is proven if once it be shown that the 
Queensland rivers suffer a loss of water comparable to that of the 
Darling. 
If the foregoing conjectures as to the drainage of the upper 
portion of the Blythesdale Braystone and its periodical replenish- 
ment by rivers in the wet seasons be correct, it is possible to conceive 
of a long drought reducing the water to the sea-level in such of the 
strata as are open at one end to the sea. If the strata can imbibe as 
much as the parallel case of the Darling would lead us to infer, they 
must lose, by leakage into the sea, nearly as much as they imbibe, 
and the amount drained from them by the bores will be insignificant 
by comparison. If the w r ater- bearing strata communicate with the 
sea, the water can never fall below the sea-level, but if it stood long 
at that level it would become salt. Some hold that the water of our 
artesian wells is sea water raised to the surface by heat or the expan- 
sion of gas ; but if it were sea water it would not lose its salt by 
filtration, and moreover it would be forced up along the bedding- 
planes of the si rata, and issue along the line of outcrop in salt water 
springs. That the water of the bores is fresh (or contains only such 
mineral salts as it might acquire from the containing strata) proves 
that it gravitates from the outcrops of the strata and not from the 
* “Australasian Pastoralists Review,” 15 th December, 1892. 
