434 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 272. 



Some further account of the Cotteswold 

 streams and of their homologues in the Swabian 

 Alp of southern Germany may be found in a 

 paper by the undersigned on the ' Drainage of 

 Cuestas' (Proc. Geol. Assoc, London, xvi, 

 1899, 75-93). The failure of even the obsequent 

 streams fully to occupy their meandering val- 

 leys suggests that all the streams of the region 

 have diminished in volume on account of cli- 

 matic change or of deforesting and cultivation ; 

 beheading is therefore not alone the cause of 

 the misfit of the Coin and its neighbors in the 

 upper Thames system. 



LANDQTJAET AND LANDWASSEE. 



Heim's explanation of the diversion of the 

 upper waters that once belonged to the Land- 

 ■wasser by the headward growth of the Land- 

 quart in the Alps of eastern Switzerland has 

 been made familiar in Lubbock's ' Scenery of 

 Switzerland.' A serious difficulty that stands 

 in the way of this explanation is presented by 

 A. V. Jennings {Oeol. Mag., London, 1899, 

 259-270) ; namely, that the growth of the Land- 

 quart before its capture of the upper Land- 

 wasser would have had to be through a belt of 

 resistant rocks, which usually rise high in ridges 

 and peaks. If the capture really took place, 

 it seems to have been long ago, for the divide 

 at the head of the Landwasser appears to be 

 formed not of bed rock as Heim implies, but 

 of heavy morainic deposits by which certain 

 streams, once captured by the Landquart, are 

 now returned to the Landwasser. 



Certain lines of evidence that might be found 

 in connection with the form and attitude of the 

 valley floors before the time of capture are not 

 mentioned. 



EIVEE GOEGKS OPPOSITE LATERAL FANS. 



A JOUENEY in Bokhara by Rickmers {Oeogr. 

 Journ., xiv, 1899, 596-620) led to the head- 

 waters of the Oxus, where a great body of con- 

 glomerates is deeply dissected, producing bad 

 lands on a gigantic scale well illustrated by 

 figures from photographs. The relation of the 

 conglomerates to the lofty snow mountains 

 further east suggests that the former represent 

 an ancient ' wash ' from the latter, the whole 

 region now being uplifted and trenched. The 

 local stream in a branch valley of the Yakh 



river excited the curiosity of the traveller by 

 alternately passing through open basins and 

 narrow rock-walled gorges, and as Rickmers 

 was 'unable to find any mention of a similar 

 phenomenon in the literature on the subject,' 

 especial description of these ' Dandushka bar- 

 riers ' is given. They appear to be examples 

 of gorges produced by a stream that has been 

 displaced from the axis of its valley by the 

 growth of large lateral fans such as may be 

 seen in the upper Eugadine of Switzerland. 

 They are, therefore, analogous to gorges due to 

 local displacement and superposition of streams 

 on rocky beds by the irregular distribution of 

 glacial drift, but they are of peculiar interest 

 from their spontaneous production by the inter- 

 action of different members of a single drainage 

 system. Although such features of a valley 

 are as well specialized as the thorns and galls 

 of a twig, they are not likely to be given any 

 conveniently designative name by British geog- 

 raphers, inasmuch as one of the honorary secre- 

 taries of the Royal Geographical Society recently 

 takes occasion to say that " the invention of a 

 new scientific word is always a positive evil, to 

 be avoided if possible" (Oeogr. Journ., 1899, 

 658). On the supposition that nothing worth 

 naming remains to be discovered in scientific 

 geography, this dictum may have value ; but a 

 hundred years hence geographers will probably 

 look on the geographical terminology of to-day 

 as we do on that of our predecessors a hundred 

 years ago, when atoll and caldera, mesa and 

 canyon, moraine, drumlin, esker and kame had 

 no place in the English language. 



AN AVALANCHE TEACK ON MT. SHASTA. 



Among many items of interest in the intro- 

 ductory pages of Merriam's ' Biological Survey 

 of Mount Shasta' (U. S. Dept. Agric, N. 

 Amer. Fauna, No. 16, 1899), is the account of 

 the path formed by a recent avalanche that 

 must have been of unusual size, through a 

 forest of large firs. After gaining headway in 

 descending from the upper slopes, the snow cut 

 a broad swath thi-ough the huge trees, carrying 

 their trunks forward over a gently sloping 

 tract, and strewing hundreds of great logs 

 75 to 100 feet long and 3 or 4 feet in diameter, 

 in confusion over the broad area where, the 



