148 Notes and Comments. 
and the lakes themselves could in most cases;have been pre- 
dicted from the positions of the ice-margins that were deducible 
from other classes of evidence. I do not overlook the fact 
that there are two fundamentally antagonistic explanations 
of the ‘ Drift” phenomena—the land-ice theory and the 
“Great Submergence,”’ but which ever of these interpretations 
be theright one, neither is compatible with the “‘ river-trespass’” 
hypothesis. On the other hand, I have long thought that the 
study of these “ certain channels ”’ did administer the merciful 
and much needed coup de grace to the “ Great Submergence.”’ ” 
CONTROL OF RIVER CHANNELS. 
In the Proceedings of the Cotteswold Naturalists’ Field Club 
(Vol. XIX., part 1) recently issued, Mr. T. S, Ellis has a paper 
on ‘ The Control of River Channels.’ In this he refers to the 
channels of the Humber and the various suggestions which 
have been made for confining the present changing navigable 
channel to a definite course. He illustrates his remarks by a 
sketch which we are kindly permitted to reproduce. Mr. 
Ellis states that 
THE HUMBER 
‘is really an estuary common to the Ouse and to the Trent, 
which unite at Trent Falls. The part shown in the figure is 
divided into three sections. The first, which is directed 
north-east, is expanded in the middle and encloses a large 
shoal], the Whitton Sands. The second is directed south-west 
in a single channel. The third branches from a line of the 
second, and is directed to the east; it encloses, with a con- 
tinuation of the second section, an island, formerly a shoal— 
Read’s Island. Thus is described a roughty shaped figure-of- 
eight, bent in the middle and enclosing in the two loops the two 
shoals. Taken as a whole, there is an elongated double curve 
having tributaries flowing in on the convexities. Each section 
illustrates the law that when a river’s bed is too wide for its. 
requirements at low-water, a shoal will form. This may be 
on either bank, but if tributaries fall in on both sides in suffi- 
cient number or size to keep open a channel, the shoal will be 
in island form. Of the two alternative channels neither is 
likely to be quite satisfactory, or to be permanently the better 
of the two.’ 
THROUGH CHANNELS. 
‘Both of the channels mentioned are necessary—each has 
to take the land drainage on its own side of the river. There is, 
however, no need that both should be through-channels. The 
question which of them may be closed at the upper end has 
been settled already. Although the southern channel gives 
the more direct route from Trent Falls to Brough, the require-. 
ments of the Weighton canal make the upper one necessary, 
Naturalist, 
