November 15, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



775 



BOTANICAL SEMINAR OF THE UNIVERSITY 

 OF NEBRASKA. 



At the regular meeting on November 1, 

 Dr. Roscoe Pound read a paper on ' The Pur- 

 pose and Force of Botanical Laws,' directing 

 attention to the fact that rules of procedure in 

 science are as necessary as they are in civil life, 

 and indicating that the method by which laws 

 are obtained in the one case must be similar to 

 those in the other. The paper was discussed 

 by Professor Bessey (who spoke of the supposed 

 danger of a repression of originality through 

 the action of laws of science) ; Dr. Wolcott 

 (who called attention to the code of laws and 

 their successful execution in ornithology) ; and 

 Dr. Clements (who discussed a proposed series 

 of regulations in regard to the nomenclature of 

 plant geography). 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



PREGLACIAL DRAINAGE IN SOUTHWESTERN 



OHIO, 



To THE Editor of Science : In the issue 

 of Science of October 4, Pi'ofessor Arthur M. 

 Miller offers an objection to the conclusions of 

 Mr. Fowke, made from his studies on the drain- 

 age features of southwestern Ohio, in which 

 '^' Mr. Fowke has shown {Bulletin of the Scien- 

 tific Laboratories of Denison University and 

 Special Paper No. 3 of the Ohio State Academy 

 of Science) that the preglacial drainage of the 

 section of the Ohio river from Manchester, 

 Ohio, to Madison, Ind., was to the northward 

 along the line of the lower Big Miami and the 

 Mill creek valleys to Hamilton. It has been 

 my pleasure to have studied somewhat care- 

 fully the region under discussion in my field 

 work, and the objections which seem so appar- 

 ent to Professor Miller have not appeared so 

 to me. While I would agree in the main with 

 Professor Miller in his argument concerning the 

 formation of reentrants made by up-stream cut- 

 ting against an escarpment and the stratigraphic 

 relations of stream gradient and dip, under 

 which similar reentrants would be formed by 

 streams flowing in the direction of the dip, I 

 cannot see that there is much force in the ap- 

 plication of these principles to the problem 

 under discussion. There is no question but 



that many of the reentrants found in the Clin- 

 ton limestone outcrop of the region shown by 

 Professor Miller's map were made in the man- 

 ner he suggests. I have observed many of them 

 in the field. But at the same time there are 

 many possibilities of there being, in this same re- 

 gion, large valleys deeply buried under the man- 

 tle of drift running in the opposite direction from 

 that of these reentrants which were formed by 

 the backward-cutting streams. In all cases 

 which I have observed of these reentrants made 

 by backward-cutting streams, they might have 

 as well formed part of a system of lateral trib- 

 utaries to a main northward-flowing stream as 

 to that of a southward-flowing one. Unfortu- 

 nately the region which Professor Miller has 

 chosen in his map and studies is not the same 

 as that which furnished the data for the deter- 

 mination of the northward direction of the pre- 

 glacial waters from the vicinity of Cincinnati 

 and it would be hardly necessary to review these 

 data at this time, as the full reports are easily 

 accessible in the articles referred to and are not 

 discussed by Professor Miller. It may be well 

 to state, however, that the criteria used in the 

 location of the preglacial lines of di'ainage are 

 not confined to a study of comparative * width- 

 of-channel ' of streams, but the conclusions are 

 based upon a broader study of topographic 

 forms, comparative erosion, distribution and 

 direction of shingling of old gravels on the old 

 graded valley floors, normal and abnormal 

 stream relations and many other similar lines 

 of evidence. 



In Professor Miller's closing paragraph he 

 speaks of the symmetry shown by the streams 

 north and south of the Ohio river as adding 

 force to the argument in favor of the present 

 arrangement of the streams being also the pre- 

 glacial arrangement, and he considers the Ohio 

 as the main and parent stream. There seems 

 to be an abundance of evidence, already 

 published, to show that in preglacial times a 

 strong watershed crossed the Ohio river near 

 Manchester, Ohio, and that the section of the 

 Ohio immediately above Manchester found its 

 way up the reversed Scioto in preglacial times. 

 With the Ohio river above Cincinnati reduced 

 to a small stream (which Mr. Fowke calls Old 

 Limestone) heading only at Manchester, it 



