ARTESIAN WATER IN WESTERN QUEENSLAND. 
341 
In this case the sandstone beds above the Toowoomba basalts and 
the Murphy’s Creek beds below would feed the Blythesdale Braystone, 
and still further tend to equalise the supply by making good the loss 
entailed by the supposed connection of the latter with the ocean. 
I have spoken so much of the Blythesdale braystones that I may 
have created the impression that they are the only water-bearing beds 
of the Lower Cretaceous formation. Their importance warrants the 
attention they have received, but there are water-bearing beds on higher 
horizons. Many of the bores have struck two or more supplies of 
water. Sometimes the first supply does not rise to the surface. A 
second may reach the surface and flow over, while a third may con- 
siderably increase the supply. The feeble supply of the upper beds 
may be explained by the fact that they do not crop out at high 
altitudes. As a rule the higher beds must be more limited in extent 
and must draw their supplies for the most part from local sources— 
in other words, they crop up where the rainfall is least, and the outcrop 
has less chance of being crossed by streams running’ Ion" enough in 
fill them up with water. 
It is not asserted that all the strata in which artesian water has 
been struck have a connection with the sea. The Blythesdale Bray- 
stone as a whole probably has such a connection, for on no other 
theory can we account for the loss of water by such streams as the 
Darling River and Torrens Creek; but it “stands not within the 
limit of belief” that sandy beds only a few feet or yards in thickness 
can persist for hundreds of miles. Such a closed tube as would be 
formed by a bed thinning out at a depth, not being subject to leakage 
at the sea-level, would, on being tapped by a bore, form an inverted 
sypbon in which water would rise nearly to the level of the head of 
water formed by its outcrop ; and if it were drawn upon by numerous 
bores (the chance of its being replenished being less than that of the 
lower beds) the water might in a long drought be reduced to the level 
of the site of the lowest bore, or, in other words, could not flow a"ain 
till the bead of water had been added to by further rain. 
The varying depths at which the water-bearing beds are met 
with, even in bores not far apart, prove that the strata are subject 
to considerable undulations or dislocations. Another circumstance 
indicative of undulation is the temperature of the water of ' the 
bores, which is, in many instances, greater than the depth at which 
the water has been struck would warrant on the supposition of a 
normal increase with depth. This argument for undulation has been 
well enforced by Professor David in his article on Artesian Water in 
New South Wales and Queensland, in the Transactions of the Roval 
Society of New South Wales for 1893. Another explanation of the 
high temperature has been suggested — viz., that the water has come 
m contact with igneous rocks still retaining a considerable amount of 
their original heat. This is an explanation, however, which I hold 
to be inconsistent with the fact that the Lower Cretaceous is a forma- 
tion in which absolutely no evidence of contemporaneous igneous 
action within the Queensland area has been detected, in which respect 
it presents a strong contrast to the preceding Trias- Jura and the 
succeeding Desert Sandstone. The effect of a dislocation or fault 
throwing down a bed of sandstone sandwiched between impervious 
