512 SIMGLDITES: LHOUR SIN QIOVEIN TES 
ing an inheritance of their headwaters from geographic con- 
ditions long since vanished. Note should also be made of the 
antecedent course of the Nahe through the spur of the upland 
just back of Bingen. 
THE GORGE OF THE MOSELLE. 
SINGS FOZ, SOA, SOs, 522%, 522. GAA, S20, BAO, Ball, 
The Moselle from Trier to Coblenz follows a deep and, for 
the most part, narrow and steep-sided valley, by which the upland 
of the Hunsruck is separated from that of the Eifel. Through 
the greater part of its course, the valley has a very strongly 
meandering habit, thus repeating the behavior of the lower 
Seine. In this case, however, there is fuller demonstration of 
the inheritance of the existing incised meanders from the normal 
meanders of the river when it was flowing on a broad-floored 
valley in an earlier cycle of denudation. The upland through 
which the Moselle flows is composed of greatly disturbed rocks 
which form part of the ancient Hercynian mountain system, 
stretching from the Ardennes northeast into Germany. Nearly 
all traces of mountain form was, however, lost in the long cycle 
of denudation in which the even uplands were produced; occa- 
sional ridges, like the Hochwald and Soonwald, alone remaining. 
At the close of that cycle the Moselle must have earned the right 
to meander as freely as it choose. The present meanders, it can 
hardly be doubted, are inherited from those early ones. The 
inheritance, however, is that of a third generation; for here, as 
in the case of the Rhine, the trench of the Moselle is sunk 
beneath a flat-floored trough, which, in turn, is excavated below 
the general level of the uplands. The existing meanders must 
therefore be regarded as following those that were developed 
upon the floor of the trough, while the trough meanders followed 
those that had been still earlier developed on the upland when 
it was a lowland. In the neighborhood of Berncastel, the necks 
of some of the spurs that enter the meanders have been reduced 
to a very narrow measure; in one case, the railroad that generally 
follows the river banks shortens its course by tunnelling through 
