188 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCKLAND. 
[CH. VII. 
springs to the warming of greenhouses. Artesian wells 
have long been used in Italy, in the duchy of Modena ; 
they have also been successfully applied in Holland, China, 
and North America. By means of similar wells, it is 
probable that water may be raised to the surface of many 
parts of the sandy deserts of Africa and Asia, and it has 
been in contemplation to construct a series of wells along 
the main road which crosses the Isthmus of Suez. 1 . . . 
Among the incidental advantages arising to man from the 
introduction of faults and dislocations of the strata into 
the system of curious arrangements that pervade the 
subterranean economy of the globe, we may further 
include the circumstance, that these fractures are the most 
frequent channels of issue to mineral and thermal waters, 
whose medicinal virtues alleviate many of the diseases of 
the human frame. 
“ Thus in the whole machinery of springs and rivers, and 
the apparatus that is kept in action for their duration, 
through the instrumentality of a system of curiously con¬ 
structed hills and valleys, receiving their supply occa¬ 
sionally from the rains of heaven, and treasuring it up in 
their everlasting storehouses to be dispensed perpetually 
by thousands of never-failing fountains, we see a provision 
not less striking than it is important. So also in the 
adjustment of the relative quantities of sea and land, in 
such due proportions as to supply the earth by constant 
evaporations, without diminishing the waters of the ocean ; 
and in the appointment of the atmosphere to be the 
vehicle of this wonderful and unceasing circulation ; in 
thus separating these waters from their native salt (which, 
though of the highest utility to preserve the purity of the 
sea, renders them unfit for the support of terrestrial animals 
or vegetables), and transmitting them in genial showers to 
scatter fertility over the earth, and maintain the never- 
failing reservoirs of those springs and rivers by which 
they are again returned to mix with their parent ocean ; 
1 The French have since this time successfully sunk a series of 
artesian wells in the Sahara.— R. Hunt. 
