SUBTERRANEAN WATERS. 
435 
soil, some is taken up by organic growths and by inorganic 
compounds, some poured out upon the surface by springs and 
either immediately evaporated or carried down to larger 
streams and to the sea, some flows by subterranean courses 
into the bed of fresh-water rivers * or of the ocean, and some 
remains, though even here not in forever motionless repose, to 
fill deep cavities and underground channels.f In every case 
erected, and there appear to be several points on the coast where the sea 
flows into the land. 
Yarious hypotheses have been suggested to explain this phenomenon, 
some of which assume that the water descends to a great depth beneath 
the crust of the earth, but the supposition of a difference of level in the 
surface of the sea on the opposite sides of the island, which seems con¬ 
firmed by other circumstances, is the most obvious method of explaining 
these singular facts. If we suppose the level of the water on one side of 
the island to be raised by the action of currents three or four feet higher 
than on the other, the existence of cavities and channels in the rock would 
easily account for a subterranean current beneath the island, and the aper¬ 
tures of escape might be so deep or so small as to elude observation. See 
Am der Natur, vol. 19, pp. 129, et seqq. 
* “ The affluents received by the Seine below Rouen are so inconsider¬ 
able, that the augmentation of the volume of that river must be ascribed 
principally to springs rising in its bed. This is a point of which engineers 
now take notice, and M. Belgrand, the able officer charged with the im¬ 
provement of the navigation of the Seine between Paris and Rouen, has 
devoted much attention to it.”— Babinet, Etudes et Lectures , iii, p. 185. 
On page 282 of the volume just quoted, the same author observes : “ In 
the lower part of its course, from the falls of the Oise, the Seine receives 
so few important affluents, that evaporation alone would suffice to exhaust 
all the water which passes under the bridges of Paris.” 
This supposes a much greater amount of evaporation than has been 
usually computed, but I believe it is well settled that the Seine conveys to 
the sea much more water than is discharged into it by all its superficial 
branches. 
t Girard and Duchatelet maintain that the subterranean waters of 
Paris are absolutely stagnant. See their report on drainage by artesian 
wells, Annales des Pouts et Chaussees, 1833, 2me s6mestre, pp. 313, et seqq. 
This opinion, if locally true, cannot be generally so, for it is inconsistent 
with the well-known fact that the very first eruption of water from a boring 
often brings up leaves and other objects which must have been carried into 
the underground reservoirs by currents. 
