“It is remarkable,” says Kobell in his _Mineral Kingdom_, “how a change
of place, a circulation as it were, is appointed for the inanimate or
naturally immovable things upon the earth; and how new conditions,
new creations, are continually developing themselves in this way. I
will not enter here into the evaporation of water, for instance from
the widely-spreading ocean; how the clouds produced by this pass over
into foreign lands and then fall again to the earth as rain, and how
this wandering water is, partly at least, carried along new journeys,
returning after various voyages to its original home: the mere
mechanical phenomena, such as the transfer of seeds by the winds or by
birds, or the decomposition of the surface of the earth by the friction
of the elements, suffice to illustrate this.”