and Chelsea. So late, indeed, as the year so large a scale as the other, and is still, at the depth bably be equal to that of a small river. At Passy, "The discharge from these great wells will pronotwithstanding some defective tubage, and the circumstance that the surface of the ground is there 86 feet above the Seine, the discharge at the surface is equal to 3 millions of gallons daily; and it has been above 5 millions, or enough for the supply of a town of 150,000 inhabitants. Mr. Prestwich advocates the use of Artesian wells, some of which have been bored with success in London, and afford a large supply of water. On this head, in the address above mentioned, Mr. Prestwich said: "Numerous and useful as the London Artesian wells are, they sink into insignificance when compared with the application of the same system in Paris. Our deepest wells range from about 400 to 500 feet, and the water comes from the chalk hills at a nearest distance of from 15 to 25 miles from London; whereas in Paris the well of Grenelle is 1,798 feet deep, and derives its supplies from the rain-water falling in the Lower Greensands of Champagne, and travelling above 100 miles underground before reaching Paris. The well of Passy, sunk also through the chalk into the Lower Greensands, at a depth of 1,923 feet, derives its supplies from the same source. The water-delivery is large and well maintained. These results were considered so encouraging, that in 1865 the Municipality of Paris decided on sinking two Artesian wells of unexampled magnitude. Hitherto the bore-holes of such wells have been measured by inches, varying from 14 to 4 inches, that of Passy alone having been 4 feet at the surface and 2 feet 4 inches at bottom; but it was resolved to exceed even the larger dimensions of this well. "One of these experimental wells is in the north of Paris, at La Chapelle, St. Denis, 157 feet above the sea-level. A shaft, with a diameter of 64 feet, was first sunk through Tertiary strata to a depth of 113 feet. At this point the boring was commenced with a diameter of 5 feet, and carried through difficult Tertiary strata to a depth of 450 feet, when the chalk was reached. A fresh bore-hole was here commenced in August, 1867, which in September, 1870, had reached the depth of 1,954 feet. The works were stopped on account of the war until June, 1871, when they were resumed, and the borehole has now reached the great depth of 2,034 feet, with a diameter still of 4 feet 4 inches. It is now in the Grey Chalk, and it is calculated that the Lower Greensands will be reached at a depth of about 2,300 feet. "The other Artesian well is at the Buttes-auxCailles, on the south-east of Paris, at an elevation of 203 feet above the sea. there only 205 feet thick. The Tertiary strata are "The question may arise, and has arisen, why, with a like geological structure, should not like re And, of course, water obtained from Artesian wells is not subject to the contamination of imperfect drainage to which the water of shallow wells is always exposed. It is, however, rather country villages and small towns whose inhabitants suffer from the effects of the filtration of sewage water into their wells than Londoners, who draw their supply from the pipes. Probably, the water in all country wells is more or less impure, from the ill-effects arising from an easy method of getting rid of superfluous and impure fluid-namely, the sinking of a hole about half the depth of the neighbouring well. Mr. Prestwich says: "But with the art of well-digging it soon became apparent that, let the well be carried down but halfway to the level of ground-springs, it would remain dry, and that then, so far from holding water, any water now poured into it would pass through the porous strata down to the water-level beneath, keeping the shallower well or pit constantly drained. So convenient and ready a means of getting rid of all side of the house a well was sunk to the groundrefuse liquids was not neglected. Whilst on one springs, at a depth say of twenty feet, on the other side a dry well was sunk to a depth of ten feet, and this was made the receptacle of house-refuse and sewage. The sand or gravel acting as a filter, the minor solid matter remained in the dry well, while the major liquid portion passed through the permeable stratum, and went to feed the underlying springs. What was done in one house was done in the many; back has continued to be the practice of their more and what was done by our rude ancestors centuries cultivated descendants to the present day, with a persistency in the method only to be attributed to the ignorance of the existence of such a state of things among the masses, and to the ignorance of the real conditions and actual results of perpetuating such an evil-an evil common alike to the cottages of the poor and, with few exceptions, to the mansions of the rich." And further, he adds: "Instances occur from time to time to point out isolated consequences of this pernicious practice; but I believe no one who has not gone into the geological question can realize its magnitude. It is not confined to one district, or to a few towns or villages. It is the rule; and only within the last few years have there been any exceptions. The organized supply of water now furnished by companies in all large towns has, to a great extent, done away with the evil in those situations-though the root of the mischief has too often been left unextracted; but in villages and detached houses, great or small, it remains untouched and unchecked. Not a county, not a district, not a valley, not the smallest tract of permeable strata, is free from this plague-spot. It haunts the land, and is the more dangerous from its unseen, hidden, and too often unsuspected existence. Bright as the water often is, without objectionable taste or smell, it passes without suspicion until corrupted beyond the possibility of concealment by its evil companion ship. "Damage-slight in extent, or unimportant possibly for short use, but accumulative by constant use-may and does, I believe, pass unnoticed and unregarded for years. Nevertheless, the draught, under some conditions, is as certain in its effects-however slow in its operation—as would be a dose of hemlock. Go where we may, we never know when the poisoned chalice may be presented to our lips. The evil is self-generating; for the geological conditions supplying our necessities lend themselves to its maintenance and extension. The knowledge necessary to remedy it is of very slow growth; and the too frequent want of that knowledge, or disregard of the subject, even amongst able architects and builders, is such that, without legislative enactment, I do not see how the evil is to be eradicated for many a long term of years. "This, also, is only one form of the evil: it is that where the water-bearing strata are thin, and the wells do not exceed a depth of thirty feet. It was the one which prevailed in London, and in towns similarly situated, up to a very few years back. It even still lingers on in some private wells, and is, moreover, fostered among us by the bright-looking and cool water of too many of our public pumps; for not only does the ground still suffer from the effects of the original contamination, but also from much almost inevitable obnoxious surface-drainage, much gas escape, much rainfall on old open churchyards, which find their way to the one level of water supplying in common all these shallow wells. The evil still exists, also-although to a less extent-in towns where the wells have to be carried to much greater depths; its effects varying according as the depth and as the volume of the springs is to the sewage-escape; it is, however, only a question of degree.' From so eminent an authority as the President of the Geological Society, opinions so strongly and clearly expressed deserve the attention of those persons to whom the health and welfare of our towns are committed. The value of good water, free from impurities, everybody admits; but how few take any steps to ascertain whether they are not every day "carrying a poisoned chalice to their lips"! And this is particularly the case with the poorer and artizan classes, to whom it is of greater consequence than to any other classes that the water they drink should be pure; for they drink water, as a beverage, much more than the richer classes. As long as we depend chiefly on a river supply, we must receive impure water; but at some future time the water supply of London will be largely derived from the great underground reservoirs of the Chalk and Lower Greensand formations of Surrey and Hertfordshire. The question is one rather of expense than of engineering. only question to be considered. But in such a matter, expense is not the As it is, however, London, as compared with many country villages, is well supplied with water that is soft and in a tolerable state of purity; but it is in the power of the companies supplying the water to deliver it in a much purer state, at no very great expense, by the adoption of proper measures to secure efficient filtration. All filtration of large volumes of water should be upwards, as in the excellent cistern filters invented by Mr. Lipscombe, of Temple Bar. The fault of the filtration of the London water by the companies is that the water runs too rapidly through the filtering substances for it to leave any but the grosser impurities behind. Upward filtration, on Mr. Lipscombe's system, is necessarily slow; and the water passes first through porous stone, where the greater impurity is left, and then through a bed of powdered charcoal, from which it issues in a pure state, thoroughly freed from all impurities. The application of a system of filtration somewhat similar to this might be made to the water stored in the companies' several reservoirs, after its first filtration through a bed of gravel. It would then be delivered in a condition much more fit for drinking than it is at present. Filtration is necessary with all river-supplied water, though the water contained in the great underground reservoirs of the Chalk and Lower Greensand formations of Surrey and Hertfordshire is already efficiently filtered by its passage through the various strata. At the present time, the supply of pure water, the utilization of sewage, and the purification of the rivers, are three problems under consideration by the sanitary authorities in most large towns. They will do well to make some experiments on a large scale with the peat charcoal, but they must be carried on for a considerable length of time before they can be finally pronounced successful or unsuccessful. FEW MIDDLESBOROUGH. EW places are so illustrative of the changes time brings about as Middlesborough. Less than thirty years back, the only buildings upon land which is now the site of 15,000 houses, and a score and more of huge iron factories, were a farmhouse and a dilapidated church. In the winter time, it was a picture of loneliness and desolation. The cold, heavy river Tees flowed three fields below the churchyard towards the North Sea, whose angry billows could be distinctly heard in an east wind. There was no parsonage, but there seemed to be plenty of tombstones; and one could not help thinking, in passing, that the bodies underneath must have come a long way, and probably been subject to the additional expense of double burial fees. The internal comforts of that solitary farmstead ought to have been great to compensate for the bleakness and dampness of its surroundings. Let us hope that a generous landlord allowed the tenant the freedom of a little snipe-shooting, and that there was always a modest share of good old whisky in his cupboard, to give him a little warmth before going to bed on stormy nights. It almost takes one's breath to think of the sum that any one with the gift of prophecy in him might have made by quietly buying this farm at the time I have described. It would have been a certain method of making ten thousand pounds into a million and a half. No one then dreamt that in those dim, mysterious-looking hills northeastward was iron that would sell for what would pay off the National Debt. The old squire of Acklam Hall rarely drew blank with his hariers the field where the Middlesborough railway station now is; and even the present owner, his nephew, has shot partridges on the ground where one of the largest iron foundries in the neighbourhood now stands. Forsaken as the old Middlesborough farmhouse and church seemed to be by all but the dead, there was plenty of hospitality and genialness at the grand old mansion of Acklam Hall, two miles off-which, in the time of Charles II., had the honour of his Majesty's presence for a night. Things might have gone on in this quiet sort of way until now if there had been no Quakers in the world. The eyes of ordinary men would, probably, not have been swift to discern that the gold of that land was good; but the eye of Quakerism is like that of the eagle in its capacity for farseeing. The process of reasoning which has produced such great results seems simple and easy enough now that they are achieved; but we must not overlook the rare energy, the self-reliance, and the perseverance it required to set it in action. The giant oak was once an acorn, but it is not in its maturity a less noble tree for that. The science of geology was beginning to be trusted; and though Quakerism is not quick to have faith in anything, it holds firm and fast to its object when once it believes in it. There was, as Bishop Butler would say, a number of probabilities, amounting to moral certainty, that the long range of the Hambledon hills was full of ironstone from beginning to end, and from top to bottom. Railways were at that time beginning to be trusted, and from these sources the double idea was struck out that a railway would make the ironstone valuable, and the ironstone in turn the railway. This was the cradle in which the Stockton and Darlington Railway was rocked in its infancy, and rocked to some purpose, as the original shareholders well know. The value of the land in the neighbourhood of the new mines began to rise, and especially in that where the farmhouse and church spoken of were situated; and soon navvies in shoals were seen daily at work not far off, and bricklayers and stonemasons busy with a building nearly as long as a field. For a sum of money considered large at the time by the public, but pleasantly small as seen in secret through the Quaker telescope, this farm passed into the hands of three or four sagacious gentlemen who wore queer hats and collars, and to whom the title of "the Middlesborough owners" has long been given; and who, at their decease, will undoubtedly add largely to the probate duties received by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The soil of this memorable farm was found as favourable to all these projects as its geographical position was; and it was soon discovered that builders would not have to go far for their bricks, for at the west end of ONCE A WEEK. it there was found in the subsoil a long, deep vein of excellent clay. Surely nature, by her combinations, intended the place to be great. The town hall now stands where the respectable farmer, in his best parlour, used to smoke his Sunday evening pipe, and where the itinerant clergyman from Acklam used to join him in a cup of tea on wet and snowy afternoons after the service. A new parish church, plain but symmetrical, has now risen in the place of the old one, and has given birth to two daughter-churches, St. John's and St. Paul's, which are a credit to both their parent and grandparent-the ancient rectory of Acklam, now reduced by ecclesiastical arrangements, peculiar but not uncommon, to the lesser title of "vicarage," and to the reception of small tithes only. Looking out from this direction on a dark winter's night, there is seen at short intervals, for miles, the lurid glare of furnace fires seven times heated, more suggestive of scenes in Milton's "Paradise Lost" than "Paradise Regained;" but these flames, if horrible to look at, are earning for those enterprising gentlemen-who, in spacious mansions just out of reach of their smoke, are eating, at their seven o'clock dinner, every luxury that sea, earth, and air can yield-incomes much larger than any of those royal ones which Messrs. Odger and Bradlaugh have of late so rudely and unjustly complained of. MR. ANDREW HALLIDAY. TH HE subject of our cartoon this week, Mr. Andrew Halliday Duff-so well known in connection with literature and the drama as Mr. Andrew Halliday-is the son of the Rev. William Duff, of Grange, Banffshire, whose family is derived from Macduff, thane of Fife. He was born in 1830, and was educated at the Marischal College and University of Aberdeen, where he applied himself to the study of the classics, under Professor John Stuart Blackie. Mr. Halliday began his literary career in London as a contributor to the Morning Chronicle, and afterwards joined the Leader, also contributing largely to various newspapers in London and the provinces. He next turned his attention to the stage; and in 1858, in conjunction with Mr. Lawrence, wrote the burlesque of "Kenilworth," which achieved a remarkable success at the Strand Theatre, and has held the stage ever since, [April 27, 1872. having been constantly revived in London and the provinces. Mr. Halliday produced two other burlesques, one founded on Strand, the other on the subject of "The "Romeo and Juliet," brought out at the Lady of the Lake," and entitled "Mountain Dhu," at the Adelphi. In conjunction with the late Mr. William Brough, he which were produced at the Adelphi, Drurywrote a great number of original farces, lane, the Lyceum, and other theatres. The principal of these were "The Census," "The Pretty Horsebreaker," "A Valentine," "A Shilling Day at the Exhibition," "The Area Belle," "Doing Banting," "The Actor's Retreat," "My Heart's in the Highlands," "An April Fool," "Going to the Dogs," "The Married and Settled," and a petite drama, entitled "The Wooden Spoon Maker." Mudborough Election," "The Colleen Bawn Dickens's staff on "All the Year Round," "Mr. Halliday has a lively wit, with a soul important dramatic work, "The Great City, A criticism by no means too favourable. In 1857, Mr. Halliday produced his first at Drury-lane. It was brought out on lane-the unprecedented run of a hundred Easter Monday. The piece had-at Drurynights. "King O'Scots," "Amy Robsart," ing the manager triumphantly through the enand "Rebecca" followed, each piece carrytire season, without the necessity for change. In 1859, he produced "Little Em'ly," an adaptation of "David Copperfield" -- with the sanction of Mr. Dickens-which ran two hundred nights. "Nell," an adaptation |