208 GLIMPSES OF NATURE. 



that have flowed along the roadways to-day, and you 

 may estimate how great must be the amount of solid 

 matter which a rainy day disposes of, in that it sends 

 all its material first to the rills, then to the gutters, 

 and finally to the brooks and the rivers themselves. 



Turn your thoughts next to the rivers of the world. 

 The same action meets your mental gaze that you see 

 in that roadway. The river is an eater-away, an 

 eroder, of the land ; and it is likewise a transporter 

 of the materials it steals from the solid earth. Be it 

 slow or be it rapid in its course, its action is essentially 

 the same in character. When you come to multiply 

 the daily wear and tear of the river by its yearly work, 

 the amount of material it is seen to carry down to the 

 sea is found to exceed belief. Think of what the 

 Amazon, and the Mississippi and Missouri, the Danube, 

 Volga, Rhine, Rhone, and even our own Thames must 

 accomplish in this work of earth- wear day by day ! 

 Millions of tons of matter are removed from the land, 

 from mountain-peak and valley alike, and carried to 

 lake or sea ; just as the rills on the road pour their 

 burden into the gutter beyond. There is no cessation 

 to this action. It is perennial, incessant, everlasting, 

 as a world-phenomenon, and will continue until this 

 orb of ours becomes a waterless, dried-up cinder of a 

 globe like the moon itself. 



This action of running water is, in truth, a serious 

 thing, speaking geologically. For the tendency of 

 every rill and river is to wear down the land-surfaces 

 through which it flows to the level of the sea. If 

 you open a geological text-book, you will find the 

 rate at which each river performs this work of 

 earth-sculpture duly chronicled. It is not the least 

 interesting part of the history of running water, 



