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Besides the loss caused by percolation, some fine earth is certainly washed down the sloping grass-covered surfaces of our Downs. The washing-down process, however, will be checked in the course of time; for although I do not know how thin a layer of mould suffices to support worms, yet a limit must at last be reached; and then their castings would cease to be ejected or would become scanty.
By the constant addition of fresh water from the surface, by percolation or other usual ways of sinking, the necessary conditions for the generation of steam are maintained with surprising regularity. The differences in the shape and general arrangement of the cavities and tubes of the two caves, indicate that their action as geysers was very unlike.
We made our beds on one of the islands, and were wretchedly supplied with firewood. The booths constructed by the men were but sorry shelter, for the rain poured down without intermission till midday. There is no drainage for the prodigious masses of water on these plains, except slow percolation into the different feeders of the Leeba, and into that river itself.
Bloomsdale contains in round numbers four hundred acres; it has a frontage on the Delaware of upwards of a mile, is bounded on the west by the Delaware Canal, and is divided into two nearly equal parts by the Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad. The soil is a light loam, easily worked, suited to rapid percolation, admitting of labor immediately after heavy rain, and not liable to suffer by drought.
The remains which do become embedded, if in sand or gravel, will when the beds are upraised generally be dissolved by the percolation of rain-water. I suspect that but few of the very many animals which live on the beach between high and low watermark are preserved. The molluscan genus Chiton offers a partially analogous case.
The first of these three principal subjects the influence of the woods on springs and other living waters has been already considered; and if the facts stated in that discussion are well established, and the conclusions I have drawn from them are logically sound, it would seem to follow, as a necessary corollary, that the action of the forest is as important in diminishing the frequency and violence of river-floods as in securing the permanence and equability of natural fountains; for any cause which promotes the absorption and accumulation of the water of precipitation by the superficial strata of the soil, to be slowly given out by infiltration and percolation, must, by preventing the rapid flow of surface-water into the natural channels of drainage, tend to check the sudden rise of rivers, and, consequently, the overflow of their banks, which constitutes what is called inundation.
The ear should be carefully and tenderly washed out with castile soap, and a small quantity of the following solution poured into it two or three times daily, and the ear worked about gently in the hand to secure the percolation of the fluid through its structure. The above mixtures should be warmed before using, otherwise the dog may resist their introduction.
After breakfast I set out to make a detailed examination of the creek for a distance of three or four miles towards its source. I was glad to find some very extensive water-holes at intervals of a few hundred yards, then would come a stretch of sand from bank to bank, for owing to the want of rain the water had fallen very low, though it was still flowing by percolation through the sand.
The batteries on main-land and island replied. One hundred pieces of heavy ordnance rent the quivering air with their thunder. The rampart of the redan had been constructed twenty-four feet thick, but the high water beating against it had washed it, and, by percolation, softened it. The heavy shot from the gunboats passed though it.
There writers insist much on the necessity of taking into account, in estimating the relations between precipitation and evaporation, the abstraction of water from the surface and surface-currents, by absorption and infiltration an element unquestionably of great value, but hitherto much neglected by meteorological inquirers, who have very often reasoned as if the surface-earth were either impermeable to water or already saturated with it; whereas, in fact, it is a sponge, always imbibing humidity and always giving it off, not by evaporation only, but by infiltration and percolation.
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