46 Correspondence — Colonel George Greemvood. 



more than this. Grant this and time, and the entire land must be 

 deposited beneath the sea. So far theoretically. Practically we 

 know that it is so. Practically we know that the entire land has been 

 under the sea. In fact, as I have headed a chapter in Eain and 

 Eivers, " It is only fire that keeps our heads above water." Yet 

 Mr. Fisher, who admits the principle that rain ever has been 

 and actually is now wasliing the entire land into the sea, be- 

 gins a sentence (page 557), " The windings of the valleys 

 also appear to be on a larger scale than can be due to such 

 rivers." Why the insignificant valleys which he mentions, nay, the 

 largest valleys in earth, those of the Amazon, Yang Tze, and Missis- 

 sippi might have been formed without any river at all, by atmo- 

 spheric disintegration and the erosion of rain. That is, by the pluvial 

 action mentioned by Mr. Fisher himself. When these rivers are 

 flooded by rain they are swollen to perhaps twenty times their usual 

 volume ; and these rain-floods would occur annually in their valleys 

 whether the rivers existed there or not. That is, instead of constant 

 rivers there would be periodical rivers in the valleys. I have said 

 in Eain and Eivers, that rivers are rain reappearing and returning to 

 the sea. But Mr. Fisher talks of rivers as if they were not rain ; 

 and if not, what are they? Evaporation condensed into rain is 

 the causa causarum. Eain causes valleys. The largest rivers in 

 the world are by comparison, the effects of this causa causarum, 

 and are mere assistants in forming the wondrously magnificent 

 valleys in which they flow (for, perhaps, 4,0l miles), and which 

 are the roads which carry the entire surface of the earth into the sea. 

 This Titanic traffic is brought to them entirely by rain. That is, 

 owing to atmospheric disintegration everything on the surface of the 

 earth which is not living is decaying. Hence, soil ; and soil, which 

 is rotted subsoil, is in perpetual formation over the entire surface of 

 the earth, and is perpetually washed down the hill-side into the 

 valley, and along the valley into the sea. 



Again, Mr. Fisher says, of what he improperly calls " The valley of 

 the Waveney and the Little Ouse," " If the excavation of this valley 

 had been produced by river-action it is inconceivable how it could 

 have been excavated over the watershed." It is not asserted that the 

 so-called valley is formed by "■ river action." It is asserted that the 

 low water parting between the two valleys has been caused by what 

 caused the two rivers — rain, Mr. Fisher begins with the broad and 

 wholesome doctrine of pluvial denudation, here he comes to the 

 narrow one of fluvial denudation. That is the doctrine of Sedgwick 

 and Murchison, that denudation is only on lines on the lines of rivers. 

 This is to confuse cause and effect. In joining "Eain and Eivers" 

 together we must remember that rain is the cause, rivers the effect. 

 In a chalk country like Norfolk there is not a single so-called river 

 valley which does not begin with a dry valley, or "rain valley," far 

 above the highest springs of the river. Two opposite rain valleys con- 

 stantly cut nearly through the dividing ridge. But as long as a water 

 parting remains, and the waters run in opposite directions, we must 

 consider them as two valleys. Mr. Fisher talks of the valleys of the 



