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8

foot deep; for if after the water is found; the passage is continued horizontaly inclineing towards the base till that you have gained ye top of the earth, you will have a small fountain wch never or rarely dryeth up.  There is at the other side of the same mountain very near the base a neat fountain wch doth not dry up.  Three or four at Mont-Martre; the hight of the mountain from the bottom to the top is about 50 feet; the ground wch produceth the greater, is not above 300 toises long and 100 wide it gives but very little water and that after great rains, the [[strikethrough]][[?]][[/strikethrough]] other give not a fourth part of the great one, and run not but after great rain.

The Town of Langres is situated at the extremity of a very high eminence, wch continues in ye same hight to the length of a league with a moderate largeness; there is near it another mountain almost of the same hight and length, and more than a quarter of a league large between these two mountains there is a great vally where runs a sufficiently great rivelet or small river wch proceeds from many fountains wch are not far distant from ye top of these mountains; and it is easily to judge that theye are produceth by the rain water wch falls upon the plains wch are at the top and wch are very spacious; they thence come most from it wch is largest.

All the other fountains are near like to that and should have considerable hights from the top of their goings out.  There is a plain 6 leagues from Paris, between the valley of Palaizeau and that of Morcoussi which is more than two leagues long and one broad, where is seen meers in some places which are within 5 or 6 feet of the top of the places, but the earth there is a very hard to the depth of too or 3 feet particularly near the castle of Beauregard where there is three or four such mears and the earth is also impenetrable by the water, that there may be made a conduit of water, if one is content to digg a small ditch 2 or 3 feet deep and to fill it with stones without puting any cement in the bottom.

It may be objected that there doth not fall enough water in a whole year to furnish the great rivers which discharge themselves into the sea.

To resolve this diffulty I shall make use of an experiment which was at my request made seven or eight years ago at Dijon by a very able and very exact person in his experiments. he had put towards the top of his house a square vessel of about 2 foot diameter at [[strikethrough]] a square [[?]] [[/strikethrough]] the bottom of which there fell into a cylindric vessel, where it was easy at all times to measure [[the next 3 words have 3 crosses drawn above and below them (the lower ones being also above the words 'but very in' in the row below). They are not insertion marks (or at least, there are no marginal notes). Maybe to highlight??]] at all times how much it rained; for when the water was in the cylindric vessel it exhaled but very in 5 or 6 days, the two foot vesel was sustained by an Iron by 6 feet beyond the window where it was placed and kept, so that it might receive no rain water but but what fell immediately into the wideness of its overture and that there might enter none but what ought to fall according to the proportion of its superior surface. The result of these experiments was that there would ordinaryly fall in a year rain water to the hight of about 17 inches.  The auther of the book intituled of the origine of fountains was wont to make the like experiment during three years, and of one with another there fell of rain water in a year to the height of 19 inches 2 lines and 1/3

I[[blot]] take the mean in these observations and suppose that their falls of rain water only to the hight of 15 inches, upon this ground a toise will receive in a year 45 cubic feet of water and supposing that a league contains in length 2300 toises a square league must contain 5290000 superficiel toises, which multiplyed by 56 give 238050000 cubic feet.

The sour[[c]]es which are farthest distent from the Seine are near 60 leagues from Paris, to wit those at the river of [[Armaison?]] and the other rivers which enter into the rivers Yonne and the Seine, reckoning from the sources next the Loice near to [[Charite?]] and Yiose which enter into the Marne from those which are next to the Meuse beyond Bar-Leduc. The greatest distance of these sources one from the other is near 60 leagues. If the river be cut by a perpendicular line that passeth to 5 or 6 leagues of Paris, from the cost of corbei these sources are found towards the extremities of that line which are distant the one from the other about 45 leagues. I suppose that the whole contry is 60 leagues long, and with 50 leagues wide it makes 3000 superficiall leagues of product of which by 23880000 is 714150000000 whence is seen that the ground which furnisheth water too the river Seine at Paris, may receive in a year 714150000000 cubic feet of rain water.

Transcription Notes:
meer/mear : (archaic or dialect) a lake or marsh. 2. (obsolete) the sea or an inlet of it. Old English mere sea, lake; related to Old Saxon meri sea, Ye/the: In the absence of specific instruction regarding transcription of 'ye', and in keeping with other institutions' advice, I'm transcribing 'ye' as 'the'. mandc: You left a few "ye's" in but I left them alone. In keeping with SI instructions (type what you see) I transcribe ye ye as ye. The six plus signs may be edit marks [deletion of a redundant phrase: "at all times," which appears a few words back. "The line (abbreviated L or l or ?) was a small English unit of length, variously reckoned as ?1?10, ?1?12, ?1?16, or ?1?40 of an inch. It was not included among the units authorized as the British Imperial system in 1824." "corbei" should probably be "Corbeih."