Dear Dr. Beven,

As you have seen, the reviewers are fairly positive on your paper. The main critical remarks came from reviewer 2. I think the discussion replies you provided may be a little too brief. Basically, you so "no, what rev 2 says is not the case", but your reasoning for that is limited. Would it be possible to include some further remarks about the debate you want to discuss in your paper versus two other debates relevant for history of hydrology, which are rainfall-runoff and the use of mathematical simplifications?

On the changes you already suggested before I made my decision (thanks for those), I have mixed feelings, to be honest. I have indicated before that a historical paper - that is a paper discussing why and how certain concepts were drafted and used - is not the place to solve an hydrological issue - that is an issue that needs a solution. Your new text does include quite some new judgements by yourself on the suitability of certain approaches. That suggests to me that the text keeps including two positions, a historical perspective on ideas and call for sound hydrology, that the historical discipline tries to keep separated. Would you be able to clarify your position on this problem of mixing?

Kind regards,

Maurits