Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/419

Rh Professor Buckland's address given in "Littell's Living Age" was not a verbatim report, even this statement seemed to me likely enough to have suffered a slight change at the hands of the reporter; so I went one step further back, to Professor Buckland's "Bridgewater Treatise," of which he spoke in his address, where I find this statement: "At Perpignan and Tours, M. Arago states that the water rushes u]) with so much force, that a cannon-ball placed in the pipe of an artesian well is violently ejected by the ascending stream." Something like this is probably what Professor Buckland said in his address; and the difference between the ejecting of a ball from a pipe and the sustaining of it in the air may have seemed to the reporter of the address of slight consequence; but when you go from ejecting a hall from a pipe to the sustaining of it in the air, and then to the sustaining of a cannon, one is reminded of the man who was said to have thrown up something as black as a crow, and as the story passed from mouth to mouth he was finally declared to have thrown up three black crows.

On page 76 of the November "Popular Science Monthly," in discussing Mr. Howell's article on the "Subterranean Outlet" to the Upper Lake region, Mr. Green says of Mr. Howell that "having shown that Lake Superior at its surface is 600 feet above the Atlantic and at its bottom 573, and Ontario to be 235 feet above, with the same depth as Superior, he proceeds to make the following significant statement." This quotation would make Lakes Superior and Ontario each only twenty-seven feet deep, which is evidently a mistake; and on referring to Mr. Howell's article in "Scribner's Monthly" we find that he did not say that the bottom of Lake Superior is 573 above the Atlantic, but that "we find its bed descending 573 feet below the level of the Atlantic"; neither did he say that Ontario has the same depth as Superior, but that it "descends to an equal distance below the level of the Atlantic."

But let us begin at the beginning of Mr. Green's article, and see how he starts off. After a few words of introduction, he quotes from the account of Professor Buckland's address a few sentences ending as follows: "At Brentford, England, there were many wells that continually overflowed their orifice, which is a few feet only above the Thames. In the London wells the water rises to a less level than in those at Brentford." Mr. Green then says: "By hydrostatic pressure, the Professor, of course, means a head, i. e., that the water flowed to these wells from a higher point. If this rise were due to hydrostatic pressure, why did the water rise to a lower level at London than at Brentford among the hills?" Now, Professor Buckland's statement, just quoted, makes the orifice of the Brentford wells "a few feet only above the Thames," and Mr. Green makes his first imaginary difficulty by placing these wells "among the hills." He then quotes largely from Professor Buckland's address, and afterward exclaims: "Wells to supply London, the Professor thinks, must not be utilized