THE FARM STREAM 33 
seven-by-nine lot, a bit of lawn with a peony in the front 
yard, and a view of an asphalt pavement. 
Before the surveyor came along, lines were laid down 
according to the law of gravity. The land was divided and 
subdivided, not by fences, but by streams. 
Chief among the agencies that have shaped our farms is the 
power of moving water. By it the soils have been mixed and 
sifted and spread out. Water runs down hill, and the soils 
move ever with it. With every flood, a portion is carried a 
little way, to be dropped again as the current slackens, and 
another portion is carried farther, to mix with soils from 
various distant sources and form new fields at lower levels. 
Small fields are forming now in the beds and borders of every 
stream. And there, even as on land, some of them are ex- 
posed, shifting and barren, and others are sheltered and set- 
tled and productive. 
The rain descends upon the fields and starts down every 
slope, gathering the loosened soil particles, collecting in rills, 
increasing in volume, and cutting gullies and picking up 
loosened stones, and pouring its mixture of mud and stones 
into the creek at the foot of the slope. Then what does the 
creek do with this flood-time burden? Go down to its banks 
and ‘see. See where it has dropped the stones in tumbled 
heaps at the foot of the rapids; the gravel, in loose beds just 
below; the sand, in bars where the current slackens; the 
mud in broad beds where the water is still; for its carrying 
power lessens as its flow slackens, and it holds the finest 
particles longest in suspension. 
It will be evident that, of all these deposits, the mud flats 
are least subject to further disturbance by later floods. Here, 
then, plants may grow, least endangered by the impact of 
stones and gravel and sand in later floods or by the out-going 
ice in spring. So here are the creek’s pleasant fields of green, 
its submerged meadows, whereas the beds where the current 
runs swiftly appear comparatively barren. 
