85 



The present is not the occasion to give an outline of the whole 

 modern theory of the rivalries and activities of rivers. It is best to 

 refer to some of the writings of Professor W. M. Davies, of Harvard 

 University, through whom this theory as a distinct study first 

 became known and passed into the common acceptance of physical 

 geologists. His "Notes on the development of certain English 

 Rivers " (Geographical Journal, vol. V, i8g5, pp. 127-146) and on 

 " The Drainage of Cuestas " (Proc. Geol. Assoc., vol. XVI, 1899, pp. 

 75-93) may be specially indicated For our present purpose it will 

 be enough if we bear in mind that the rivers — under which general 

 term we may class all flowing water in its grandest or puniest 

 expression, from Ganges to brook — are constantly in motion ; not in 

 the obvious sense of the passage of their waters from a higher to a 

 lower level, but in regard to the expansion or contraction of their 

 watersheds and their volumes and the lateral shifting of their courses. 



Since watersheds in a well drained country like England are 

 but narrow strips of upland, it follows that an expanding river system 

 must be continually preying upon its neighbours, and that in a com- 

 plex area of sources and tributaries, a petty theft may easily result 

 in a wholesale readjustment of systems and boundaries. Such a 

 predatory warfare has been carried on over the south of England 

 with ceaseless activity during the latest Geological ages. In the 

 north and indeed everywhere it has been much the same, but in the 

 higher latitudes of this country the operations have been enhanced 

 or paralysed, and in either case confused, by the action of moving 

 ice. The sheer strife of river against river is not there so clearly to 

 be followed. It is not quite so simple a problem even in the south, 

 because the sea has so often taken a hand and put an end to minor 

 rivalries, and this is so in the conspicuous case which we have here 

 close at hand in the Solent. 



The south has another advantage for our purpose, in that it 

 presents a far more orderly arrangement of strata over wide areas, 

 far less interrupted by complicated folding and faulting than is the 

 case with the older rocks of the north. Excluding the Devon- 

 Cornwall peninsula and the Mendip upheaval, we have, broadly 

 speaking, over half of England a steady gentle south-easterly dip of 

 the whole series of strata, only markedly varied by the south-west 

 to north-east echelon of earth foldings which have thrown up the 

 cretaceous rocks in overlapping folds stretching individually east and 

 west, and have specially resulted, as softer beds have worn away, in 

 I those undulations and escarpments of the chalk which furnish our 

 most characteristic scenery. 



The whole subject might almost be called the intelligent 

 appreciation of scenery on a physical basis — as anatomy is the ground 

 work of figure painting. And that person can only be pitied who 

 affects to believe that the aesthetical taste for scenery is dwarfed or 

 dimmed by enquiry into the forces and actions that have moulded its 

 outline. 



It would seem hardly possible for anyone with an eye to nature 

 to take a steamboat trip from Bournemouth to Cowes without being 

 struck by the non-marine character of the shore on either hand. 



