446 
ARTIFICIAL SPRINGS. 
indefinite human progress hardly expects that man’s cunning 
will accomplish the universal fulfilment of the prophecy, u the 
desert shall blossom as the rose,” in its literal sense; but sober 
geographers have thought the future conversion of the sand 
plains of Northern Africa into fruitful gardens, by means of 
artesian wells, not an improbable expectation. They have 
gone farther, and argued that, if the soil were covered with 
fields and forests, vegetation would call down moisture from 
the Libyan sky, and that the showers which are now wasted 
on the sea, or so often deluge Southern Europe with destruc¬ 
tive inundation, would in part be condensed over the arid 
wastes of Africa, and thus, without further aid from man, 
bestow abundance on regions which nature seems to have con¬ 
demned to perpetual desolation. 
An equally bold speculation, founded on the well-known 
fact, that the temperature of the earth and of its internal waters 
increases as we descend beneath the surface, has suggested that 
artesian wells might supply heat for industrial and domestic 
purposes, for hot-house cultivation, and even for the local 
amelioration of climate. The success with which Count Lar- 
darello has employed natural hot springs for the evaporation 
of water charged with boracic acid, and other fortunate appli¬ 
cations of the heat of thermal sources, lend some countenance 
to the latter project; but both must, for the present, be ranked 
among the vague possibilities of science, not regarded as prob¬ 
able future triumphs of man over nature. 
Artificial Springs. 
A more plausible and inviting scheme is that of the crea¬ 
tion of perennial springs by husbanding rain and snow water, 
fringed with trees, all painted with an illusory truth of representation 
absolutely indistinguishable from the reality. The checkered earth, too, is 
canopied with a heaven as variegated as itself. You see, high up in the 
sky, rosy clouds at noonday, colored probably by reflection from the ruddy 
mountains, while near the horizon float cumuli of a transparent ethereal 
blue, seemingly balled up out of the clear cerulean substance of the firma¬ 
ment, and detached from the heavenly vault, not by color or consistence, 
but solely by the light and shade of their prominences. 
