lit) I he Alini'icd II (iriiliKi'iKf. February, l«9:f. 
of the r>ra/.os riviT uurlliw ai'd iiloiif^ the eastern e.scari)nieiit uf the 
Staked plains to tlieir northeast corner, nor along the north escarp- 
ment of the Plains westward to the west line of Texas, nor along any 
of the canons of the tipper Red river. The (juestion (lierefore natur- 
ally suggests itself, was Mr. Hay ever at the '' gasli " of wliich he 
speak ;, and if so, does lie kiiow Jurassic when lie sees it? lie cer- 
tainlv did not get liis information from Prof. Hill, for tlie latter says 
in liis report in one place, tiiat the i)lains material in that part of the 
state rests on tlie Triassic. He is probably aware of the fact that 
nearly every geologist, since ^Marcoii iirst dt^ermined il in 1853, has 
put the lower red beds of Texas in the Permian. 
He does not attempt to tell us whether there is an artesian water 
area in the Panhandle of Texas or not. l)ut it is |)robable that he does 
not think there is, as lie luis cut off that region from mountain supply 
by having the Rio (irande run between the Pecos and the mountains. 
He says on page 88. in speaking of the underflow of water, that 
"Mr. Hill has accounted for the source of water of the great springs of 
Texas without recourse to the distant mountains." That is only cor- 
rect in part, for there are numerous large sjirings in Texas that can 
only be accounted for Iiy liaving " recourse to the distant mountains." 
Such are the large springs in Lampasas and San Saba counties whose 
water reaches the surface tlu-ougli the ('iirlK)niferous and Silurian 
strata, ^fr. Hill mentioned Lampasas springs but did not attempt 
to give the probable source of the water, nor does he attempt to 
account for the origin of the water of any of the large springs of San 
Saba county. 
Opposite page 37 he gives Section XX showing a synclinal or trough,, 
in which are the outlines of an ideal artesian basin, as though such a 
condition existed. He says, " the conditions as shown by figure XX 
are almost those that would be found by a carefully made diagram 
of the actual levels and stratifications from the Black Hills to the 
.lames river, and across the i-egion of the Fort Worth-AVaco basin of 
Texas, as well as other regions of approved artesian water supply." 
Instead of the Fort AVorth-Waco area being a basin, it is simply a 
series of water bearing strata that have a regular dip from the north- 
west, and is not a basin in any sense of the word. Had ]\Ir. Hay 
known anything about the matter, hewould never have said it was 
similar to his ideal basin. He seems to hav(> read Hill's report to 
very little advantage. 
In Mr. Hay's part of the report, there are in isolated paragraphs less 
than three jiages altogether on the Texas area, and the reference is 
rather incidental than otherwise, and yet there is in these references 
such an array of ignorance of the matter of which he is trying to 
write, whether it l)e of fact or of conclusion, that his report for practi- 
cal purjioses is absolutely worthless. 
1 have called attention to that part of the report that refers to 
Texas, for the reason that I am personally familiar with a large part 
of its territory and can speak from personal knowledge. If the rest of 
