quantity is physically impossible. Ample supplies could be obtained in both these cases by shifting the situation a few hundred yards.

The subject-matter of the following pages is divided into chapters which treat of geological considerations, the new red sandstone, well sinking, well boring, the American tube well, well boring at great depths, and examples of wells executed and of localities supplied respectively, with tables and miscellaneous information. Each system with its adjuncts has been kept complete in itself, instead of separating the various tools and appliances into classes, the plan adopted in the most approved French and German technical works. This, however, when too rigidly adhered to, as is the case with German works in particular, renders it troublesome for even a practised engineer to grasp a strange system in its entirety, while the pupil is wearied and retarded in his reading by an over-elaborate classification.

It may, perhaps, be remarked that undue prominence has been given to the tertiary and cretaceous formations, but it is urged in extenuation that they happen to underlie two of the most important cities in Europe, and that they have, in consequence, received a more thorough investigation than has been accorded to other districts. The records of wells in many formations are singularly scanty and unreliable, but it is hoped that the time is not far distant when the water-bearing characteristics of strata, such as the new red sandstone and permian, will receive proper attention, and that correct official records of well-work will be found in every locality, as this alone can rescue an important branch of hydraulic engineering from the charge of empiricism.

In the course of the work the writings of G. R. Burnell, C.E., Baldwin Latham, C.E., M. Dru, Emerson Bainbridge, C.E., G. C. Greenwell, and other well known authorities, have been freely referred to, particular recourse having been had to the works of Professor Prestwich, F.G.S.

I am indebted to Geo. G. André, C.E., F.G.S., Messrs. S. Baker and Son, and Messrs. T. Docwra and Son, for many suggestions and much valuable information; to Messrs. Docwra special thanks are due for some of the important sections illustrating chapter vii.

Any claim to attention the book may deserve is based upon its being an attempt to embody, in a collected form, facts and information derived from practice, or from various sources not accessible to the majority of those engaged in the superintendence, or otherwise interested in the construction of wells.

ERNEST SPON.  

16, Craven Street, Charing Cross,
June, 1875.

SINKING AND BORING WELLS.

CHAPTER I.
GEOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS.

Nearly every civil engineer is familiar with the fact that certain porous soils, such as sand or gravel, absorb water with rapidity, and that the ground composed of them soon dries up after showers. If a well be sunk in such soils, we often penetrate to considerable depths before we meet with water; but this is usually found on our approaching some lower part of the porous formation where it rests on an impervious bed; for here the water, unable to make its way downwards in a direct line, accumulates as in a reservoir, and is ready to ooze out into any opening which may be made, in the same manner as we see the salt water filtrate into and fill any hollow which we dig in the sands of the shore at low tide. A spring, then, is the lowest point or lip of an underground reservoir of water in the stratification. A well, therefore, sunk in such strata will most probably furnish, besides the volume of the spring, an additional supply of water.

The transmission of water through a porous medium being so rapid, we may easily understand why springs are thrown out on the side of a hill, where the upper set of strata consist of chalk, sand, and other permeable substances, whilst those lying beneath are composed of clay or other retentive soils. The only difficulty, indeed, is to explain why the water does not ooze out everywhere along the line of junction of the two formations, so as to form one continuous land-soak, instead of a few springs only, and these oftentimes far distant from each other. The principal cause of such a concentration of the waters at a few points is, first, the existence of inequalities in the upper surface of the impermeable stratum, which lead the water, as valleys do on the external surface of a country, into certain low levels and channels; and secondly, the frequency of rents and fissures, which act as natural drains. That the generality of springs owe their supply to the atmosphere is evident from this, that they vary in the different seasons of the year, becoming languid or entirely ceasing to flow after long droughts, and being again replenished after a continuance of rain. Many of them are probably indebted for the constancy and uniformity of their volume to the great extent of the subterranean reservoirs with which they communicate, and the time required for these to empty themselves by percolation. Such a gradual and regulated discharge is exhibited, though in a less perfect degree, in all great lakes, for these are not sensibly affected in their levels by a sudden shower, but are only slightly raised, and their channels of efflux, instead of being swollen suddenly like the bed of a torrent, carry off the surplus water gradually.

An Artesian well, so called from the province of Artois, in France, is a shaft sunk or bored through impermeable strata, until a water-bearing stratum is tapped, when the water is forced upwards by the hydrostatic pressure due to the superior level at which the rain-water was received.

Among the causes of the failure of Artesian wells, we may mention those numerous rents and faults which abound in some rocks, and the deep ravines and valleys by which many countries are traversed; for when these natural lines of drainage exist, there remains only a small quantity of water to escape by artificial issues. We are also liable to be baffled by the great thickness either of porous or impervious strata, or by the dip of the beds, which may carry off the waters from adjoining high lands to some trough in an opposite direction,—as when the borings are made at the foot of an escarpment where the strata incline inwards, or in a direction opposite to the face of the cliffs.

Fig. 1.

Fig. 2.

As instances of the way in which the character of the strata may influence the water-bearing capacity of any given locality, we give the following examples, taken from Baldwin Latham’s papers on ‘The Supply of Water to Towns.’ Fig. 1 illustrates the causes which sometimes conduce to a limited supply of water in Artesian wells. Rain descending on the outcrop E F of the porous stratum A, which lies between the impervious stratum B B, will make its appearance in the form of a spring at S; but such spring will not yield any great quantity of water, as the area E F, which receives the rainfall, is limited in its extent. A well sunk at W, in a stratum of the above description, would not be likely to furnish a