Some of the best authorities say that only flowing wells should be called artesian. I will refer to a few of the many flowing wells. The hot springs in many parts of the world are natural artesian wells, the water being forced up from great depths. It is estimated that there are more than fifty thousand wells east of the Mississippi River from one to two thousand feet in depth, drilled to obtain petroleum oil or the inflammable gas which accompanies it. These are as strictly artesian wells as those that send up water.
Among the most noted artesian wells is the one at Grenelle, in Paris. In boring this well, after going down one thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven feet and passing through a stratum of rock over a subterranean fountain, the drill suddenly fell fourteen feet and the water soon rose above the surface. The temperature of the water coming from this well is eighty-two degrees, Fahrenheit. It is conducted by pipes to the hospital in the town, for heating purposes. The bore in most artesian wells is from three to six inches in diameter, but the one at Passy, near Paris, is twenty-eight inches in diameter and one thousand nine hundred and twenty-five feet deep.
In town and country a pure water supply is of the utmost importance to the health of the people and in many countries it can only be obtained by deep and expensive boring. Various uses are made of water flowing from artesian wells. In many places it is used to propel machinery. In the desert of Sahara artesian wells have become of great value in making the country near them habitable, as the flow is sufficient to irrigate large areas of land. Two new villages have been built in the desert and two hundred thousand palm trees have been planted about these wells. In the Western part of the United States, where the rainfall is limited, many artesian wells have been bored, the water being largely used for irrigation. In California more than forty thousand acres are irrigated from flowing wells. The average depth of these wells is about two hundred and fifty feet and the average discharge eighty thousand gallons per day.
M. S. Hall.
WHERE WE FOUND THE LADY-BIRDS.
(A TRUE INCIDENT.)
One spring we were cleaning away the leaves and ice from about the roots of a little thicket of white Scotch roses, as we have always called the low-growing, small-blossomed white rose so popular in many country places.
The sunshine had not warmed the air enough to melt the snow and ice which had been formed in early winter about the roots and which held together a mass of oak leaves driven by the wind to this hiding-place or else put there by the farmer in the fall. One lump of ice about the size of a man’s fist had been very hard to dislodge from the rose bushes and as it was brought out by the teeth of our iron rake we picked it up to show to some interested bystanders and to our surprise, and theirs also, we found a number of the small orange-colored beetles usually called lady-birds closely imbedded in this icy prison.
Breaking off a part of the lump which held a half dozen or more of the tiny beetles, we carried it into the house and allowing it to melt in our hands we were surprised to find the lady-birds slowly begin to come back to life and its pleasures. They seemed at first as stupid and drowsy as any other mortals when just aroused from a heavy sleep, but in an hour’s time they were flying about the room and finally all gathered on the window where the sunshine was streaming in with greatest light and warmth.
The children who had at first mourned over the supposed death of these special insect pets of children were never tired of telling the story afterward of how “the lady-birds could freeze to death all winter and then wake up and fly in the springtime.”
Mary Catherine Judd.