But, meanwhile he was wise enough to ask a geologist of those parts how far he thought it was down to the water.

The geologist made his calculations, and said: "You will go through so many feet of Bagshot sand; and so many feet of London clay; and so many feet of the Thanet beds between them and the chalk: and then you will win water, at about 412 feet; but not, I think, till then." The well-sinker laughed at that, and said, "He had no opinion of geologists, and such-like.

He never found any clay in England but what he could get through in 150 feet." So he began to bore--150 feet, 200, 300: and then he began to look rather silly; at last, at 405--only seven feet short of what the geologist had foretold--up came the water in a regular spout.

But, lo and behold, not expecting to have to bore so deep, he had made his bore much too small; and the sand out of the Thanet beds "blew up" into the bore, and closed it.

The poor manufacturer spent hundreds of pounds more in trying to get the sand out, but in vain; and he had at last to make a fresh and much larger well by the side of the old one, bewailing the day when he listened to the well-sinker and not to the geologist, and so threw away more than a thousand pounds.