PEFACTON 



streams and rivers that disappear in the "sinks" 

 of that State. 



It is a pleasant conception, that of the unscien- 

 ific folk, that the springs are fed directly by the 

 sea, or that the earth is full of veins or arteries 

 that connect with the great reservoir of waters. 

 But when science turns the conception over and 

 makes the connection in the air, disclosing the 

 great water-main in the clouds, and that the mighty 

 engine of the hydraulic system of nature is the 

 sun, the fact becomes even more poetical, does it 

 not ? This is one of the many cases where science, 

 instead of curtailing the imagination, makes new 

 and large demands upon it. 



The hills are great sponges that do not and can- 

 not hold the water that is precipitated upon them, 

 but let it filter through at the bottom. This is 

 the way the sea has robbed the earth of its various 

 salts, its potash, its lime, its magnesia, and many 

 other mineral elements. It is found that the oldest 

 upheavals, those sections of the country that have 

 been longest exposed to the leeching and washing 

 of the rains, are poorest in those substances that 

 go to the making of the osseous framework of 

 man and of the animals. Wheat does not grow well 

 there, and the men born and reared there are apt 

 to have brittle bones. An important part of those 

 men went downstream ages before they were born. 

 The water of such sections is now soft and free 

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