OF SPRINGS OF WATER ON THE TOPS OF MOUNTAINS.

It is quite evident that the whole surface of the ocean--when there
is no storm--is at an equal distance from the centre of the earth,
and that the tops of the mountains are farther from this centre in
proportion as they rise above the surface of that sea; therefore if
the body of the earth were not like that of man, it would be
impossible that the waters of the sea--being so much lower than the
mountains--could by their nature rise up to the summits of these
mountains. Hence it is to be believed that the same cause which
keeps the blood at the top of the head in man keeps the water at the
summits of the mountains.

[Footnote: This conception of the rising of the blood, which has
given rise to the comparison, was recognised as erroneous by
Leonardo himself at a later period. It must be remembered that the
MS. A, from which these passages are taken, was written about twenty
years earlier than the MS. Leic. (Nos. 963 and 849) and twenty-five
years before the MS. W. An. IV.

There is, in the original a sketch with No. 968 which is not
reproduced. It represents a hill of the same shape as that shown at
No. 982. There are veins, or branched streams, on the side of the
hill, like those on the skull Pl. CVIII, No. 4]