The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Complete


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WATER WAS FORCED UP TO THESE SUMMITS.  
Water would not move from place to place if it were not that it  
seeks the lowest level and by a natural consequence it never can  
return to a height like that of the place where it first on issuing  
from the mountain came to light. And that portion of the sea which,  
in your vain imagining, you say was so high that it flowed over the  
summits of the high mountains, for so many centuries would be  
swallowed up and poured out again through the issue from these  
mountains. You can well imagine that all the time that Tigris and  
Euphrates  
9
45.  
have flowed from the summits of the mountains of Armenia, it must be  
believed that all the water of the ocean has passed very many times  
through these mouths. And do you not believe that the Nile must have  
sent more water into the sea than at present exists of all the  
element of water? Undoubtedly, yes. And if all this water had fallen  
away from this body of the earth, this terrestrial machine would  
long since have been without water. Whence we may conclude that the  
water goes from the rivers to the sea, and from the sea to the  
rivers, thus constantly circulating and returning, and that all the  
sea and the rivers have passed through the mouth of the Nile an  
infinite number of times [Footnote: Moti Armeni, Ermini in the  
original, in M. RAVAISSON'S transcript "monti ernini [le loro  
775  


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