On this supposition only can we account for many of them being perforated through rocks, some of the oldest wells known, being dug entirely through that material and to a prodigious depth.* " The Jews," as by the Abbe Pleury, in his Manners of the justly remarked ' is " Ancient Israelites,' owing to their numerous herds of cattle, set a very high value upon their wells and cisterns, more especially as they occupied a country where there was no river but Jordan, and where rain seldom fell." It is to the East we are indebted for the

only known method of sinking wells of depth, through quicksands and loose soil, by first constructing a curb, which. settles as the excavation is deepened, and thereby resists the pressure of the surrounding soil.

The readers of the Bible will not need to be told of the well at which Hagar rested, when she fled from the ill treatment of Sarah, nor of the meeting of Rebecca, at the well of Nahor, with Abraham's servant, whom he had sent to procure a wife for his son Isaac, nor of Jacob's well, at which our Saviour met the woman of Samaria.

Numerous wells of great antiquity are still to be seen in Egypt, and among the ruins of Ninevah, a city of which the foundation was laid by Ashur, the son of an

antediluvian, is a remarkable well which supplies the peasants with water, to which they ascribe many virtues.!

It was a common practice in those Eastern countries, to, erect stations and place guards for the protection of wells against robbers, who, knowing that travellers would of