on the nature of water, from da vinci's notebooks

Therefore it must be said that there are many rivers through which all the element has passed and have returned the sea to the sea many times.
And so it is now sharp and now strong, now acid and now bitter, now sweet and now thick or thin, now it is seen bringing damage or pestilence and then health or, again, poison.
And as the mirror changes with the color of its objects so, too, does the water change with the nature of the place it passes: health-giving, harmful, laxative, astringent, sulfurous, salt, sanguine, depressed, raging, angry, red, yellow, green black, blue, oily, thick, thin.
Now it brings a conflagration, then it extinguishes; it is warm and it is cold; now it carries away, then it sets down, now it hollows out, then it raises up, now it tears down, then it establishes, now it fills up and then it empties, now it rises and then it deepens, now it speeds and then lies still, now it is the cause of life and then of death, now of production and then or privation, now it nourishes and then does the contrary, now it is salt and then without savor, and now with the great floods it submerges.

photo sabrine rothe