448 
ARTIFICIAL SPRINGS. 
describe liis method of creating springs, which is substantially 
the same as that lately proposed by Babinet in the following 
terms: “ Choose a piece of ground containing four or five 
acres, with a sandy soil, and with a gentle slope to determine 
the flow of the water. Along its upper line, dig a trench five 
or six feet deep and six feet wide. Level the bottom of the 
trench, and make it impermeable by paving, by macadamizing, 
by bitumen, or, more simply and cheaply, by a layer of clay. 
By the side of this trench dig another, and throw the earth 
from it into the first, and so on until you have rendered the 
subsoil of the whole parcel impermeable to rain water. Build 
a wall along the lower line with an aperture in the middle for 
the water, and plant fruit or other low trees upon the whole, 
to shade the ground and check the currents of air which pro¬ 
mote evaporation. This will infallibly give you a good spring 
which will flow without intermission and supply the wants of 
a whole hamlet or a large chateau.” * Babinet states that the 
whole amount of precipitation on a reservoir of the proposed 
area, in the climate of Paris, would be about 13,000 cubic 
yards, not above one half of which, he thinks, would be lost, 
and, of course, the other half would remain available to supply 
the spring. I much doubt whether this expectation would be 
realized in practice, in its whole extent; for if Babinet is right 
in supposing that the summer rain is wholly evaporated, the 
winter rains, being much less in quantity, would hardly suffice 
to keep the earth saturated and give off so large a surplus. 
The method of Palissy, though, as I have said, similar in 
principle to that of Babinet, would be cheaper of execution, 
* Babinet, Etudes et Lectures sur les Sciences d’’ Observation , ii, p. 225. 
Our author precedes his account of his method with a complaint which 
most men who indulge in thinking have occasion to repeat many times in 
the course of their lives. “ I will explain to my readers the construction 
of artificial fountains according to the plan of the famous Bernard de Pa¬ 
lissy, who, a hundred and fifty [three hundred] years ago, came and took 
away from me, a humble academician of the nineteenth century, this dis¬ 
covery which I had taken a great deal of pains to make. It is enough to 
discourage all invention when one finds plagiarists in the past as well as in 
the future! ” (P. 224.) 
