254 Life in Autumn Storm 



Yet, though the completion of the torrent's work 

 of erosion brings fertility welcome to man, it is by 

 no means equally convenient for him when the 

 disturbance is too often renewed. The restlessness 

 of the autumn rivers is seldom more strikingly 

 seen than in mountain valleys where the green 

 meadows are perpetually being scarped and chan- 

 nelled anew by the shifting bed of the stream. The 

 whole floor of the valley consists of layers of soil 

 and half-rounded pebbles, which are laid bare in 

 every steep bank. But in every spate the river 

 resumes its work of reshaping its ancient material 

 by cutting deeper into the meadow at each 

 concave bend, and leaving a wider flat of shingle 

 exposed in a convex curve on the other shore. 

 Just as the whole area of Britain is actually increas- 

 ing as the result of coast erosion, so the extent of 

 land in such river valleys at least becomes no less 

 under the perpetual fret of the streams. But in 

 both cases the water gives a very unsatisfactory 

 exchange for what it takes away. In the ages 

 since the soil of the meadows was spread by the 

 primeval floods it has slowly gained a covering of 

 fertile loam, perpetually deepened by the vegeta- 

 tion of countless summers. It is land on which 

 cattle will grow fat. But the new shingle on the 

 convex beaches is barely flecked with coarse brush- 

 wood and scanty weeds, and years must pass before 

 it will feed even a wandering goat. When the 

 floods of a single winter are seen to have mined 

 away a strip of four or five feet from the meadow, 

 it is strange to reflect how endlessly the river must 



