ELISHA MITCHFL1, SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY 104 
and so the sheets or beds of rock stand on edge and lean 
down-stream (S.E.). These rock beds are for the most 
part fairly soft and more easily washed away than other 
more massive and more durable layers which occur at ir- 
regular intervals, and consequently below these more 
massive sheets of rock are the shoals and rapids as indi- ° 
cated in figs. 2 and 3 above and as described further on. 
WATERPOWER IN THE GRANITIC AND GNEISSIC AREAS. 
The larger granitic and gneissic areas occupy the re- 
gion trom the western border of the slate belt just men- 
tioned westward to the foot of the Blue Ridge, the 
typical Piedmont plateau section of the state. 
In granitic and gneissic rock, the materials not being 
arranged in definite strata or layers, the exact conditions 
which cause the production of cascades and rapids in 
streams are less apparent than in the slaty and 
schistose rocks just described. The accompanying 
sketch (fig. 4) illustrates a few of the conditions favor- 
able to the development of waterpowers in a region 
where these rocks prevail, as in portions of central and 
western North Carolina. 
1. One often finds in such regions breaks, such as 
faults or joints in the rock, the material on one side of 
the break being somewhat crushed or sheared and hence 
easily removed. Of course the streams of water in cross- 
ing the section of country where these breaks or faults 
occur, and especially where the crushed or sheared side 
of the break is the lower side on a sloping surface, re- 
move this lower side more rapidly than the upper and 
thus form a cascade from the higher to the lower level 
as seen at 1 in fig. 4. It is in that way that some of the 
beautiful falls of the southern Appalachian mountain re- 
