The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Complete


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bursting of these springs; and if you chose to say that the rains of  
the winter or the melting of the snows in summer were the cause of  
the birth of rivers, I could mention the rivers which originate in  
the torrid countries of Africa, where it never rains--and still less  
snows--because the intense heat always melts into air all the clouds  
which are borne thither by the winds. And if you chose to say that  
such rivers, as increase in July and August, come from the snows  
which melt in May and June from the sun's approach to the snows on  
the mountains of Scythia [Footnote 9: Scythia means here, as in  
Ancient Geography, the whole of the Northern part of Asia as far as  
India.], and that such meltings come down into certain valleys and  
form lakes, into which they enter by springs and subterranean caves  
to issue forth again at the sources of the Nile, this is false;  
because Scythia is lower than the sources of the Nile, and, besides,  
Scythia is only 400 miles from the Black sea and the sources of the  
Nile are 3000 miles distant from the sea of Egypt into which its  
waters flow.  
The tide in estuaries.  
9
71.  
Book 9, of the meeting of rivers and of their ebb and flow. The  
cause is the same in the sea, where it is caused by the straits of  
Gibraltar; and again it is caused by whirlpools.  
794  


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