THE 



JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY 



SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER, igoi 



THE RIVER SYSTEM OF CONNECTICUT^ 



The tendency of the modern school of physiographers seems 

 to be to ascribe little importance to geological structure planes 

 as a factor in determining the position and the orientation of 

 water courses. In an earlier period greater attention seems to 

 have been accorded to this condition, and quite apart from the 

 purely theoretical conceptions of the closet geologists many 

 valuable observations were placed upon record. Th. Kjerulf, 

 the former Director of the Geological Survey of Norway, 

 remarked the regularity in the arrangement of fjords, streams, 

 and valleys as represented upon the map of Norway, and from 

 this was led to believe that their directions corresponded to the 

 faults in a system of dislocations. Daubree^ has furnished many 

 examples of regular networks of stream channels which resem- 

 ble the network produced by a number of intersecting series 

 of parallel joint planes {riseaux reguliers de cassures), and the 

 explanation of this correspondence he believed to be a causal 

 one, the planes of separation, or jointing, being locally gap- 

 ing where the streams adhere to the joint "direction, but closed 

 where they have been diverted from the course of the joint. 

 Van Hise3 has in a similiar way explained the zigzags of 



' Published with the permission of the Director of the U. S. Geological Survey. 

 ^ Daubree : Geologic Experimentale. Paris, 1879, p. 361. 

 5 Van Hise : Trans. Wis. Acad. Sci., etc., Vol. X., pp. 556-560, 1895. 

 Vol. IX, No. 6. 469 



