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can be prepared equal to any coal now brought into the state for steam and domestic use, and at a price below that of the cheapest of them.

In addition to this, the chemist of the survey is now engaged in making a series of determinations in order that we may know the amount of pitch and commercial products-benzine, aniline dyes, etc.—which our lignites will yield with proper treatment, and that we may form an idea of their commercial value when treated in this manner.

The amount of this material reported by numerous correspondents and known to us to exist throughout the state warrants the strongest effort to prove its availability as a valuable fuel.

ARTESIAN WATERS.

The necessity for a greater supply of water, and that, too, of greater purity, than can be secured by the means of shallow wells or from streams and tanks is one that is making itself felt more and more strongly in many parts of Texas. A few localities which happen to be most fortunately situated have solved this momentous question for themselves by securing artesian water, while other places have spent their money in vain in an effort to reach these subterranean streams.

In order that those who are directly interested in this matter may rightly understand the conditions necessary to the probable existence of artesian water beneath them, and the direct bearing which the Geological Survey will have on the determination of the boundaries within which such wells may be looked for with confidence, and those places where they are an uncertainty or can not be found at all, the following abridgment of a discussion on the "Conditions of Artesian Wells," by Thomas C. Chamberlain, in the Fifth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, is given:

CONDITIONS OF ARTESIAN WELLS.

While the elementary principles of artesian wells are simple and known to every schoolboy, the real problems they present are complex. Some of these principles are best explained by the following ideal sections and the explanations given with them. The first represents the chief requisite conditions of artesian wells, while figures 2 and 3 show some of the variations possible: