Water Rising Through the Earth, and a Treatise-Plan on Water
The circulation of water likened to blood, plus an outline of books on rivers and ships
The left page compares the movement of water rising through the earth's veins, against the pull of its weight, to blood rising in the body and falling back: water lifting from the sea's depths to the mountain summits, pouring out where its veins are broken, then returning to the sea in ceaseless revolution and taking on the nature of every place like a mirror. The facing page lists the books of a projected treatise on water, covering the concavity, sides, rudder and keel of ships, water jets and siphons, the meeting of currents, river embankments and shoals, the bends of river-courses, and the cutting of navigable canals across rivers. Both pages are densely written in mirror script under transmitted light.
On this page
Water rising through the earth against its own weight
Leonardo asks what cause raises water through its veins against the natural course of its weight, and answers that it is the same that raises the humours in every animate body. As blood rises and falls back, so water lifts from the sea's depth to the mountain tops, pours out through broken veins, and returns to the sea in continual revolution.
From sea-depth to mountain summit: water in the body of the earth
The passage treats the earth like a living body threaded with veins of water, likening the cycle to sap descending from the cut branches of a vine onto its roots and rising anew. Water is said to have nothing of its own but to take on the nature of every place it passes, as a mirror takes the colour of what stands before it.
Outline of a projected treatise on water
The right page numbers the books of a planned treatise: on the inequality of ships' concavity, sides, rudder and keel; on water jets, water enclosed in vessels with air, and siphons; and on the encounters of currents coming from different directions.
Books on canals, embankments and river-works
Later entries in the list turn to works on the land: the forms and permanence of river embankments, the shoals formed below weirs, the sites from which to draw river water, the conducting of navigable canals over or under intersecting rivers, and the soils that soak up canal water.