Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
vapor condensation and transport theory for the origin of springs. The explanation appears
further down in the text, where he describes the earlier experience that had led him to this
condensation theory. In 1677 he had been on an expedition to the Island of St Helena to
chart the stars of the Southern Hemisphere; when he was carrying out nighttime celestial
observations there on top of a hill some 800 m above sea level, the condensation was so
heavy and fast that the droplets on his glasses had to be wiped off every 5-10 min, and the
paper on which he recorded his observations became immediately so wet that it would not
bear ink.
A more egregious example of reactionary science is Woodward's (1695) explicit reliance
on the biblical Abyss or Plato's Tartarus as the ultimate water supply for the springs, rivers,
vapors and rains of the earth. Woodward was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and also
Professor of Physics at Gresham College in London; he was thus acquainted with Halley.
Indeed in 1686 Halley had been elected Clerk of the Royal Society, which held its meetings at
Gresham, and it was at that same college that he conducted his pan evaporation experiments
(Halley, 1694). The learned men at Gresham College appear to have held various opinions
on the origins of springs and rivers, but the Common Opinion was evidently not their favorite
one.
Fortunately, the situation was not as dismal everywhere. One influential proponent of
the Common Opinion in England was John Ray (1627-1705), naturalist and Cambridge
professor until 1662, when he resigned out of religious principle (Raven, 1950). Early on,
in fact one year before the publication of Perrault's topic, he (Ray, 1673, pp. 296-300)
expresses the view “. . . that all springs and running waters owe their rise and continuance to
rain, seems to me more than probable . . .”; and he gives as specific reasons that he had never
seen running waters breaking out near the top of hills unless there was enough earth above
them to feed these springs, that springs generally abate in dry summers, that one seldom
finds springs in clay grounds where water sinks in with difficulty, and that those, who would
have fountains be fed by the sea, have still not given a satisfactory account of the ascent of
water to the mountain tops and its efflux there; with filters and even pumps no such high
ascents have ever been produced. He further argues that it is also unlikely that fountains
can be attributed to “...watery vapors elevated by subterraneous fires, or . . . diffused
heat ...,andcondensed by the tops and sides of the mountains as by an Alembick head,
and so distilling down and breaking out where they find issue”, because the heat required to
raise those vapors “through so thick a coat of earth” would be way too large. Finally, he also
considers the general statement “. . . that rain sinks not above a foot or two deep into the
earth...”asmanifestly false; as evidence for his assertion he lists the internal flooding of
coal mine pits and shafts during wet weather, the near complete absence of surface runoff
on sandy and “heathy” grounds even during the heaviest rains, and the fact that the water
outflows from caves in the sides of mountains generally increase in the rainy season and often
stop completely in dry weather. In a later work Ray (1692; 1693) elaborates on this same
theme but in more detail and with additional evidence. For instance, he mentions, without
further specifics the “Ingenious French Author”, who demonstrated in the Seine that rain
may suffice to feed ordinary springs. It is unlikely that Ray had personally read Perrault's
topic. Rather, as a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1667, he was probably familiar only
with the brief review by Anonymous (1675), which contains Perrault's comparison between
rainfall and river flow in Burgundy, but nothing on Perrault's theory that springs originate
from rivers, a view so at odds with his own. Ray also mentions his own observations on a
little brook near his dwelling at Black Notley in Essex, which support his hypothesis that
