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PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION C. 
clavbeds would be to stop any communication with the sea which it 
may have had originally, and convert it into a closed tube. 
An idea prevails in some quarters that every successful artesian 
bore is successful because it has struck the channel of an underground 
river ; but against this theory some fatal objections may be raised. A 
river ceases to be a river when it enters the sea. Now, the Blythesdale 
beds are marine, as their outcrop (the nearest part to the old coast- 
line) contains marine fossils, as do the argillaceous strata above them ; 
and we cannot imagine a river bed meandering through a sea-bottom. 
Besides, the wide area over which the water-bearing beds have already 
been met with in bores renders the idea that they are all river beds in 
the last degree improbable. 
The mountains of New Guinea have been pointed to by some as 
supplying the necessary “ head ” for the artesian water of the interior 
of Queensland. Lower Cretaceous rocks are known to exist in 
Queensland not far from the Gulf of Carpentaria, and it is more than 
likely that the base-beds of the formation are actually below the sea- 
level in Queensland, and that they may sweep beneath the Gulf and 
the western portion of Torres Straits, and rise to the surface in 
Dutch New Guinea. But this necessarily implies that these beds 
must crop out beneath the sea, and such a leakage would be the result 
that I doubt if any head of water in New Guinea would raise the 
water in Queensland above the sea-level. 
The Himalayas and even the Andes have been supposed by others 
to be the gathering-ground. It is not conceivable that any fissure or 
network of fissures could be kept open from the Andes or Himalayas 
to Queensland. Neither is it conceivable that any stratum could 
extend continuously for such distances, remain without interruption 
of such a character as to be a channel for water, sweep beneath the 
intervening oceanic depths and be protected throughout by a cover of 
impermeable rock ; all of which conditions would have to be fulfilled 
before we could accept this theory. 
Another theory, that of “rock-pressure,” is thus concisely 
formulated in the “American Geologist” (vol. v.,p. 300) by Mr. Bobert 
Hay : — “ All rocks in the earth’s crust contain some water. The more 
porous rocks contain the greater quantity. At a distance below the 
surface the superincumbent strata subject the rock masses to 
enormous pressure. ” On the assumption that the average specific 
gravity of the deep-seated rocks of Kansas is 3, Mr. Hay calculates 
that “ a prism of the rocks to the depth of 600 feet, and 1 inch 
square, would weigh 718 lb., which is equivalent to a pressure of 
52 atmospheres. If, then,” he continues, “ 25 feet be taken as the 
measure of a column of water equivalent to one atmosphere, the rock- 
pressure would be more than the equivalent of a column of water 
twice this height. Let a water-bearing stratum at a depth of GOO feet, 
as at Richfield, be pierced by the drill, we should then have the rock- 
pressure of 52 atmospheres squeezing the water out of the rock pores, 
and, granting sufficient plasticity in the rock and a sufficient quantity 
of water, it must rise in the tube which has only a pressure of one 
atmosphere upon it. ... A bed rock with mobile molecules at or 
near saturation under this enormous pressure must cause in a narrow 
tube a flowing well.” 
