of Hydraulic Machinery, co-operating incessantly with the Sea and with the Atmosphere, to dispense unfailing supplies of fresh Water over the habitable surface of the Land.[1]
Among the incidental advantages arising to Man from the introduction of Faults and Dislocations of the strata, into the system of curious arrangements that pervade the subterranean economy of the Globe, we may further include the circumstance that these fractures are the most frequent channels of issue to mineral and thermal waters, whose medicinal virtues alleviate many of the diseases of the Human Frame.[2]
Thus in the whole machinery of springs and Rivers, and the apparatus that is kept in action for their duration, through the instrumentality of a system of curiously constructed hills and valleys, receiving their supply occasionally from the rains of heaven, and treasuring it up in their everlasting storehouses to be dispensed perpetually by thousands of never-failing fountains, we see a provision not less striking, than it is important. So also in the adjustment of t-he relative quantities of Sea and Land, in such due proportions as to supply the earth by constant evaporation, without diminishing the waters of the ocean; and in the appointment of the Atmosphere to be the vehicle of this wonderful and unceasing circulation; in thus separating these waters from their native salt, (which though of the highest utility
- ↑ The causes of intermitting Springs, and ebbing and flowing wells, and many, minor irregularities in the Hydraulic Action of natural vents of water, depend on local Accidents, such as the interposition of Syphons, Cavities, &c., which are scarcely of sufficient importance to be noticed, in the general view we are here taking of the Causes of the Origin of Springs.
- ↑ Dr. Daubeny has shown that a large proportion of the thermal springs with which we are acquainted, arise through fractures situated on the great lines of dislocation of the strata. See Daubeny on Thermal Springs, Edin. Phil. Jour. April, 1832, p. 49. Professor Hoffmann has given examples of these fractures in the axis of valleys of elevation, through which chalybeate waters rise at Pyrmont, and in other valleys of Westphalia. See Pl. 67, fig, 2.
