large areas of flat meadows
will be formed, every part of which has at times been the stream's
course. How many ages, then, must it have taken to produce the level
meadows we see extending for immense distances on either side of our
big rivers, and even those adjoining quite small streams? The level
surface thus created by the river or brook's course perpetually
deflected and reflected, is finally completed by the floods bringing
down a deposit of soil in solution, which is precipitated and settles
into any surface irregularities left by the wanderings of the stream.
A faint conception of an absolutely illimitable cycle of years, during
which the whole extent of visible flat meadow has been again and again
eroded and restored, is thus conveyed.

Confirmation of this alteration of their courses by streams is
afforded when we cut a main drain through one of these meadows, to
carry the water from the connected furrow drains of adjoining arable
land. The alluvial soil can be found as deep as the depth of the
present brook, free from the stones found in the arable land, and
containing, to the same depth as the brook, fresh water shells similar
to those in the brook to-day. There was a bend in course of formation
in one of my brooks, where the stump of a tree, whose fall was the
starting-point, could be seen standing in the newly-formed ground, a
yard or more from the stream when I left, though I can remember when
it was so near as almost to touch the water.

If we form an S from a piece of wire, and pinch it together from top
to bottom, the loops become so flattened, [S], that one of them may
almost unite with the central curve. The same thing often happens in
the loops of a brook, and, in time, the stream will complete the
junction, forming a short circuit.[2] Thus an island may be formed; or
when the old loop opposite the short circuit gets filled up with
deposit or falling banks--the water preferring the short circuit--a
piece of land may be cut off from one of the former sides of the brook
and transferred to the other, so that where the brook is a boundary
between two owners or parishes one owner or parish may be robbed and
the other owner or parish becomes a receiver of stolen goods. There
was an instance of this on the farm I owned and occupied adjoining the
Aldington Manor property, and the owner and the tenant of the piece
transferred to my side could not reach it without walking through the
brook. In this case, ho