We have lived for ten years in a house served by a shallow well credited with being never failing and it has faithfully lived up to its reputation, even through the driest of seasons.  Once, however, it made real trouble.  Over it stood a picturesque latticed well house.  On one of the beams a pair of robins nested annually.  In the middle of the third summer the water developed a queer flavor.  It steadily grew stronger until one night the steam arising from a hot bath caused the pajama-clad head of the house to seize a flashlight and move hastily to the well house.  One beam of light disclosed the horrid truth.  Floating in the water far below were two very dead fledglings.

The next day a well cleaner collected twenty-five dollars for removing the birds and pumping out the well.  He also gave some excellent advice which was followed promptly.  The well house, picturesque though it was, gave way to a substantial masonry curbing equipped with a stout wire cover.  The peace of mind so gained has more than offset the trifling expense.  No longer need one peer fearfully down a twenty-five foot shaft when a pet cat fails to show up for a meal, or shoo away from the spot the over-inquisitive offspring of visiting friends.

The drilled well, against which there is no possible argument save that of cost, is made by boring a hole in the ground with a powerful apparatus until sufficient subterranean water is reached.  There are two methods, the chop and the core drill.  With the former, a cutting tool exactly like the drill used to drive holes in rocks for blasting, only larger, cuts a circular hole downward.  The boom of the drilling rig as it raises and drops the drill provides the necessary impact.  With the core method, as its name implies, a hollow boring drill cuts its way aided by steel shot and a flow of water forced through the pipe that rotates the cutting tool.

With either method the results are the same.  Sooner or later the drill will reach an underground water course of sufficient size to give an ample flow.  As such drilling is done on a charge of three to five dollars a foot, the owner, of course, hopes for sooner.  Except where there is an underlying stratum of sand or gravel beneath hard pan, the drill has to go through rock.  How far depends on the kind.  Sandstone is the best water producer; limestone yields very hard water.  Again, drilling through till (a heterogeneous mixture of clay, gravel, and boulders) may or may not locate water readily depending on how densely it is packed.  The rocks known as gneiss and schist are readily bored and are considered fair water bearers.

Granite is bad news.  It means slow work and a deep and expensive well.  It is one of the hardest rocks with little water content.  The only hope is that the drill will strike a vein flowing through a fissure.  Whether it will be at fifty or 500 feet is a pure matter of luck.  A dry well at 100 feet may become a gusher at 105 delivering twenty gallons to the minute, or it may stay dry for another two to five hundred feet.