Water, the carrier of nature; a horn-shaped mountain cavity
Water transmutes and bears the soil to the sea; a funnel cavity joined to a horn makes a great sound
A pencil note states Leonardo's aphorism that water is the carrier (vetturale) of nature, transmuting the terrain and bearing a great part of it to the sea. A pen paragraph then describes how the shepherds of Romagna, at the foot of the Apennines, hollow great horn-shaped cavities into the mountain and join a horn to them, so that the whole produces a very great sound. A tapering funnel form, marked a, is drawn at the left to illustrate the acoustic cavity.
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Water is the carrier of nature
Leonardo names water the vetturale, the carrier or vehicle, of nature: it is the moving agent that acts upon the land. The remark opens onto his broader theory of water as the shaping force of the earth's surface.
Water transmutes the terrain and bears it to the sea
The same note adds that water transmutes the terrain and carries a great part of it toward the sea, an early statement of erosion and sediment transport as the process that reworks the body of the earth.
Funnel-shaped cavity joined to a horn (a) makes a great sound
A funnel-shaped hollow, marked a, is coupled to another like it. Leonardo reports that Romagna shepherds cut such horn-like cavities into the mountain and fit a horn to one side, so the small horn becomes one body with the cavity and yields an enormous sound: an observation on natural acoustic amplification.