1G4 THE EARTH MADE READY FOR MAN 



and endlessly it cuts down and makes even the sur- 

 face of the earth. 



Have you ever seen, after a hard rain-storm, how 

 gullies had been worn in the road where the water ran 

 off into the gutter? Sometimes the gullies are so small 

 that you have to look closely to see them, but many 

 of them are so large that they make deep cuts in the 

 side of the road. Men come and mend the road, but 

 unless they put a hard surface upon it those gullies will 

 be made again and again whenever it rains very hard. 



Do you know why? It is because the water is trying 

 to make itself a channel so it can flow away faster to 

 the deep sea, and although many of the drops sink 

 into the ground or are taken back into the sky while 

 on the way, yet most of them get to the ocean at last. 



The raindrops seem so impatient to get there that 

 they wait for nothing. They will hurry along the 

 surface of the road and run off the side into the gutter. 

 More drops join and follow the others, for drops of 

 water like to be together. It is their nature, and they 

 cannot work well alone. These drops make a con- 

 tinuous stream, trying to get down from the higher 

 surface of the road. They push away the sand and 

 gravel, then the little pebbles that are in their way, 

 until they have cut a channel through which they 

 can flow more swiftly and surely to the brooks and 

 the rivers on lower ground. 



If the road is not mended, when the next rain- 

 storm comes the gully will be worn deeper until the 

 rain water will have made a permanent channel for 

 itself, through which in rainy weather it regularly 

 flows from the surface to the gutter on its way to 



