XXXVIII ANGLO-GERMAN SOCIETY 215 



lakes may be, at least in part, rock basins, and not 

 entirely the result of obstruction by delta barriers. 



May I speak of yet another matter ? In your 

 England, the meandering valley of the Wye is instanced, 

 if I remember correctly, as an illustration of the meander- 

 ing habit of rivers, this habit having been explained, in 

 preceding paragraphs, as the result of free swinging on 

 open flood plains or valley floors. There seems to be 

 an omitted item, namely, that the meandering of the 

 Wye (and of various other rivers whose meanders are 

 incised, or enclosed, like the lower Seine, the Moselle, 

 the Ozage) was originally developed on an ancient 

 valley floor, whose level lay somewhere about the 

 present hill-tops, and that the present meanders of the 

 river and of the valley that it has cut are inherited and 

 increased from the previously developed meanders, 

 and thus brought into the early stage of the new cycle 

 of erosion (introduced by general elevation of the 

 region). Strongly developed meanders in a strongly 

 meandering young valley, with steep sides and narrow 

 floor, are not, it seems to me, within the possibilities 

 of a single cycle of erosion. Strong meanders are 

 features of normal maturity, and if they occur in associa- 

 tion with youthful features, such as narrow valleys, 

 there seems to be no way of explaining them so well, 

 as by inheritance from a previous cycle, in which 

 maturity or even old age had been reached. The 

 Torridge, in Devonshire, I think, is a good example of 

 a competent, or fitting, incised meandering river ; and 

 one of its loops has been cut off, leaving an isolated 

 hill around which the river no longer swings — so it 

 appears on the new-coloured one-inch map. 



Please present my compliments to Lady Avebury 

 and your daughters, and do not let the seven-legged 

 Phlebisco be too seriously associated in your small boy's 

 memory with Standard Natural History. — Sincerely 

 yours, W. M. Davis. 



Towards the end of November he repeated 

 a visit which he had paid the year before, going 

 to Sunningdale to luncheon with Sir J. Hooker. 

 He notes that he found him, in spite of his 

 advanced age, very well, and that he gave Lord 



