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SCIENCE 



[Vol. XXI. No. 534 



extremely valuable map, as it contains all available information 

 concerning the relief of our country, expressed in a form most 

 generally useful. A smaller sheet, including the whole country, 

 represents increasing altitude by a series of nine brown tints; a 

 very effective presentation destined to serve as the original of 

 many a map in our school geographies. 



A visit to the office of the Survey in Washington discloses the 

 great fund of information there gathered on the topographic map- 

 sheets. Unhappily the sheets are not at present published for 

 general distribution ; they are chiefly for the use of the members 

 of the Survey in their geological studies. The edition of each 

 sheet as printed is stored in a room containing a great number of 

 shelves, each one marked in front with the name of its map. 

 Hardly a sheet can be drawn from its shelf without revealing 

 some interesting features to the geographer, the geologist, or the 

 engineer. 



It is only of the first of these interests that I shall speak. 

 Although when examined on the ground that they represent, the 

 maps are not so accurate in detail as we might wish, still the 

 graphic view of the country that they present is so vastly more 

 minute than any to which we have hitherto had access that it is 

 something of a revelation to look over them. A great fund of 

 geographical information is stored up in that map-room. One 

 may look forward to an auspicious geographical day when the 

 maps are generally distributed, and when that universal study, 

 home geography, is enriched by the illustrations that they will 

 afford. Some of the smaller eastern States have already reached 

 this happy position, by means of two-party arrangements between 

 themselves and the national Survey. The first of these was New 

 Jersey. After the Coast Survey had furnished the triangulation, 

 and after about half of the mapping had been borne by the State, 

 the Geological Survey sustained the remainder of the cost of 

 field-work; but in this State, the form of publication is some- 

 what different from that adopted for the rest of the country. 

 The sheets are larger, and overlap to a considerable extent, so 

 4hat there is no place that is not well within the boundary of one 

 sheet or another. The publication of the seventeen inch-to-a- 

 mile sheets and of the shaded relief map of the State on a scale 

 of five miles to an inch, has been duly noted in Science at the 

 time of their appearance. The separate sheets may be obtained 

 from the State Geological Survey for 25 cents a piece, or $5 for 

 the complete atlas of twenty sheets. Massachusetts was the next 

 State to take advantage of the two-party arrangement. The tri- 

 angulation here was taken chiefly from the old Borden survey. 

 Now the whole State is covered in 54 inoh-to-a-mile sheets; 

 and a four-sheet map, on a scale of four miles to an inch with 

 contours every hundred feet, has been published. Like the New 

 Jersey atlas, the 54 sheets of Massachusetts may be bought of the 

 Commissioners (address. Commonwealth Building, Boston) for 

 six dollars. Composites of the sheets about Boston and Wor- 

 cester have been published by the Appalachian Mountain Club 

 for use in field excursions and otherwise. Rhode Island is next 

 to be mentioned. Here the area is so small that the several 

 sheets covering the State, with parts of Massachusetts and Con- 

 necticut next adjoining, have been mounted on rollers, and 

 through the active interest of the State Commissioners, the local 

 Legislature has been induced to make a special appropriation of 

 $3,500 for the distribution of the mounted map to all public schools 

 and libraries within the State, — a wise and liberal step towards 

 better public education. The mounted map is also sold by J. C. 

 Thompson, Providence, at |3 a copy. It is manifest that large 

 States may follow this plan, by mounting grouped sheets in 

 roller maps about four by five feet; so that every school should 

 be provided with a large map of its own part of the State. If 

 one may judge by the small appreciation that teachers gener- 

 ally have of the physical features of their own regions, such a 

 distribution of maps is greatly needed. 



In other parts of the country, there are no States completely 

 mapped as yet. A large area of country has been covered along 

 the central and southern Appalachians, and the first folio of the 

 Geologic Atlas was a map from this district, vvith others soon to 

 follow. Missouri and Kansas have the good fortune to be repre- 

 sented by a large number of contiguous sheets; and in the west- 



ern States and Territories the maps of the older surveys have 

 been redrawn and printed on the new uniform plan. The various 

 lines of interest suggested by these maps would lead me to write 

 many pages, were they all followed ; and I shall therefore limit 

 myself here to the one which takes my first attention, the phy- 

 sical features of our home geography. This may be illustrated 

 by a brief reference to five maps from Missouri, — the Tuscumbia, 

 Versailles, Warsaw, Clinton, and Butler sheets. 



These sheets run from east to west, partly across the central 

 part of the State, somewhat south of the Missouri River, and in- 

 clude the greater part of the basin of the Osage River. The 

 eastern course of the Osage, towards its mouth in the Missouri, is 

 seen to be extremely tortuous in a steep-sided valley, trenched 

 two or three hundred feet below the level of the surrounding 

 upland. The meanders of the river are peculiar in not being, 

 like those of the Mississippi, spread upon a flat flood-plain. High 

 spurs of the upland occupy the neck of land between every turn 

 of the stream. Evidently, the meanders are not of the ordinary 

 type. It has been suggested that they result from the jointed 

 structure of the rooks that the river traverses ; but this is hardly 

 possible, for it would not explain the manifest relation that ex- 

 ists between the size of the river and the radius of its swinging 

 curves: the larger the stream, the larger the radius. I have 

 therefore supposed that we have in this curiously curved valley 

 an illustration of a process long recognized in the case of various 

 rivei-s of northern France. Briefly stated, this is as follows: 

 Once upon a time, a river, long active, had worn down its basin 

 to a surface of faint relief. Its valley sides had wasted away so 

 as to oppose little interference to its lateral swinging. Its slope 

 had become very gentle, and its current had taken to a deviating 

 path, peculiar to old streams, which so generally meander on their 

 flat flood plains. Then the region that it traversed was evenly 

 raised to a greater altitude, and the faithful stream once more 

 turned to the task of cutting down its channel close to base-level 

 and carrying away all the waste that was fed into it. But in 

 doing so, it retained in the new cycle of its life the meandering 

 course that it had attained in its old age in the previous cycle. 

 Although its activities were rejuvenated, its habit of swinging 

 from side to side was still preserved. It behaves as if it were on 

 a flood-plain, although the flood-plain, on which it learned this 

 behavior, has been consumed. The Seine and Meuse have ex- 

 tremely meandering channels in deep and rather steep-sided val- 

 leys; and I have learned from my most obliging and well- 

 informed correspondent, Mr. E. de Margerie, that the above ex- 

 planation is current regarding them. The Mosel also has a deep 

 meandering gorge between the Eifel and the Hunsriick, in western 

 Germany. In this country, I have supposed that the meanders 

 of the north branch of the Susquehanna, in the plateau of north- 

 eastern Pennsylvania, might be thus explained; and the incredi- 

 ble turns of the unpronounceable Connedogwinit, opposite Har- 

 risburg, seem to be of the same kind, except that the Susque- 

 hanna learned its swinging habit on a Cretaceous lowland flood- 

 plain, while the Connedogwinit was taught in late Tertiary times. 

 On looking over the Missouri maps, I concluded that the Osage 

 was another example of the same inherited habit; and in this 

 case there is a neat little bit of confirmation on the western of the 

 map-sheets named above that deserves mention. 



If it is true that the curved course of the Osage is inherited 

 from a flood-plain whose level lay across the top of the present 

 valley when the land lay lower, we must suppose that, after 

 gaining elevation to the present altitude, and thus gaining per- 

 mission to cut down towards a new base-level, advantage would 

 be taken of this permission first in the lower part of the river, 

 and that the deepening of the channel would gradually work 

 backwards up stream. Good fortune brought us upon the river 

 while it is, as we may say, just in the act of thus adjusting its 

 valley to the new altitude of its drainage area. We see the lower 

 course already deepened, while the upper course still preserves its 

 part of the flood-plain from which the curves of the lower river 

 were inherited. The upper branches of the Osage flow upon 

 broad flood-plains meandering freely, skirted by back-swamps, 

 and frequently cutting off their curves and leaving ox-bow lakes 

 to one side of their newer course. These upper branches preserve 



