Jim Viar, age 9 of Columbia Tenn.

What does the ocean do with all the river water?

The Cumberland River flows past Nashville to join the big Ohio: The Ohio joins the Mississippi and all the water flows down into the Gulf of Mexico: This kind of thing is going on all the time. Big rivers and little rivers are forever emptying their waters into the seas, It is natural to wonder what happens to all this water. Why doesn't the ocean fill up its basins and spill over onto the land?

This would happen if it were not for the smiling sun, .Every day, the warm sunbeams dry up thousands of tons of water from the face of the seas. The water becomes vapor gas and is wafted up into the air. High up, the vapor gels into misty clouds that float along on the breezes. Sooner or later, the cloud mist gels into rain and snow and comes tumbling down to the earth again,

A good deal of the rain water collects to form streams, They join up to form rivers and the rivers flow along to empty their waters into the sea. The water cycles goes on and on. The rivers empty their water into the sea. The sun dries up moisture into the air, The moisture becomes clouds that drop the water. The water gathers and goes back to the sea again on and on and on.