DARCY THE SPRINGHUNTER

Henry Darcy (1803-1858), the father of groundwater hydrology according to Meinzer (1934) and others, is well known for his namesake 1856 law, but this occupies an insignificant part of an appendix in a 647-page book on municipal water supply. On the other hand, he devoted much more space in that same work to springs, especially the Rosoir Spring, located 7 miles from Dijon, whose waters he brought to supply the city by an underground aqueduct in 1840. This presentation places Darcy’s concern with locating and evaluating water-supply springs in historical context, especially his classification of springs, his explanations for their origin and complicated behavior, his methods for establishing paleoflow rates, and standards of potability.