may have no connection whatever with a 
ea. There seems to be the utmost confusion in 
Hann’s writings in which he uses barometer maxima 
minima or the above indiscriminately. It is very 
reading and 
Dr. 
and 
certain that the whole meteorologic world has understood 
definite high and low areas, ordinarily called anticyclones 
and cyclones, in all these expressions. 
Second, the point I made is by no means a 
as the following figures from Dr. Hann show. 
trivial one, 
Twill take 
the two colder months, Feb. and March, from his table. 
Temperature Fahr. at base of Sonnblick during high 
and low areas: : 
HIGH AREA. LOW AREA. 
Feb. 2aom BZ <c 
March BO) 7) Eige) 
IT submit that temperatures 10.4° and 16.4° Aigher ina 
high area (anticyclone) than ina low area (cyc lone) are 
not trivial. 
Third, Dr. Hann himself shows that the usual law holds 
in the Alps, for in the latter part of this same paper there is 
atable giving the temperature in high areas 10°.5 F. and 
in low areas a difference of 18°.9 in exactly 
the opposite from that previously demon- 
strated. 
IT am inclined to think that these serious contradictions 
throw a cloud over this investigation, and it is of the 
utmost consequence that this be exp!ained, but if it is not, 
35-4, OF 
direction 
then the original contention, that temperature in the 
Alps is higher in high areas than in low areas, must be 
abandoned. H. A. HAZEN. 
Washington, D. C. 
SCIENCE 
Vol. XXIII. No. 580 
Meandering Rivers in Missouri. : 
Pror. Wat. B. Davis’s letter, in Sczence of November 19, 
contains much that it suggestive relating to the extent 
and phases of past denudations over the area of the Ozark 
uplift. In my letter of July 21, however, to which his 
is a reply, it was not so much my object to attempt to fix 
the age of the Osage River, or to define the changes of 
level that have taken place, as it was to raise the question 
whether a past base-levelling was necessary to explain the 
meander phenomena of this and the other rivers referred 
to. I there undertook to explain how the sinuosities of 
such streams might develop in a country which was not 
base-levelled. Mr. Davis, with ch aracteristic candor, 
accepts ulls @ as an ‘‘important correction” to his explana- 
tion. Briefly, and expressed in general terms, the view 
advanced was: that, under certain conditions of declivity 
and stratigraphy, streams will acquire trenched mean- 
dering courses irrespective of whether the country be a 
flat plain or not, and irrespective of whether the lines of 
flow at the beginning of these conditions were decidedly 
sinuous or only gently curving. In any case, the radius 
of developed meanders will, of course, be proportional to 
the volume of the river. 
This conclusion seems to follow logically from the 
premises that all rivers exert a sapping as well as a 
corrading action; br, in other words, that they tend to 
erode laterally as well vertically. To produce these 
special results it is necessary that the declivity be not so 
great that lateral wear become altogether insignificant as 
compared with vertical wear; or that stratigraphic con- 
as 
ditions be not such as to entirely thwart these tendencies 
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