182 
ARE SOILS ENRICHED, IMPOVERISHED, [Part III. 
Ocean through the medium of the Thames, and 
on the other side to the English Channel by the 
Itchen. Yet from all sides of the tops of these 
hills, and from all sides of every height on the 
globe, there are dry river beds , down which soil 
flows whenever rain is heavy enough to run: 
and all the infinite ramifications of these dry 
rivers , or ravines, or gorges, or gullets, or combs, 
or chines, or bottoms, or vales, or dales, or deans, 
or lavants (qu. from labens ), by whatever name 
they or any parts of them are locally called, all 
have descents graduated by water, and outlets 
to the running rivers (if not to the sea), with¬ 
out any abrupt junction of the lower ends of the 
dry valleys with the upper ends of the river val¬ 
leys ; and no drop of rain runs an inch on the 
surface of the earth without, as far as it goes, 
setting some soil forward on its road to the sea. 
And it won’t run back again. No return tickets 
are given. It will wait there, and go on by the 
n ex-t-rain. The very soil on which we tread, 
and which we cultivate, may be said to be on 
its road from the hill to the sea. This is no 
new doctrine. Lyell quotes Pythagoras for it, 
through the medium of Ovid — 
“ Eluvie mons est deductus in aequor.” 
Soil, which is the disintegration or detritus of 
rocks (I use the term rocks in the wide, geo- 
