94 THE NEW AGRICULTURE. 



ject than that which is furnished by a gently sloping road during 

 a heavy shower of rain. Let us suppose that you know such a 

 road, and that just as the rain is beginning you take up your 

 station at some part where the road has a well-marked descent. At 

 first you notice that each of the large heavy drops of rain makes 

 in the dust, or sand, one of the little dints or rain-prints already 

 described. As the shower gets heavier these rain-prints are ef- 

 faced, and the road soon streams with water. Now mark in what 

 manner the water moves. 



" Looking at the road more narrowly, you remark that it is full 

 of little roughnesses at one place a long rut, at another a pro- 

 jecting stone, with many more inequalities which your eye could 

 not easily detect when the road was dry, but which the water at 

 once discloses. Every little dimple and projection affects the flow 

 of the water. You see how the raindrops gather together into 

 slender streamlets of running water which course along the hol- 

 lows, and how the jutting stones and pieces of earth seem to turn 

 these streamlets now to one side, and again to another. 



" Toward the top of the slope only feeble runnels of w r ater are to 

 be seen, but further down they become fewer in number and at 

 the same time, larger in size. They unite as they descend, and the 

 larger and swifter streamlets at the foot of the descent are thus 

 made up of a great many smaller ones from the higher parts of the 

 slope. 



" Why does the water run down the sloping road ? Why do 

 rivers flow? Why should they always move constantly in the 

 same direction ? They do so for the same reason that a stone falls 

 to the ground when it drops out of your hand; because they are 

 under the sway of that attraction toward the center of the earth, 

 to which, as you know, the name of gravity is given. Every drop 

 of rain falls to the earth because it is drawn downward bv the. 



