746 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
it strikes them, thus filling the water with sediment. The water striking one shore 
is deflected to the opposite, like the rebound of a billiard ball from the cushion. 
Being thus thrown from side to side, the water in making crossing has naturally 
less fall and a wide area of channel width over which to spread, thus forming 
shallow places or bars. This gives the river the appearance of a succession of 
deep pools between which intervenes a shallow. As was said by Hon. Robert 
S. Taylor, of Indiana, a member of the Mississippi River Commission, in an 
address before the Merchant's Exchange, of St. Louis, if the water could be lifted 
out of the bed of these rivers so that the true shape of the channel could be 
seen, it would be found to be a succession of deep hollows divided by high 
sand-hills, the ridge of the latter lying crosswise of the stream. 
The problem of improvement for purposes of navigation thus resolved itself 
into two. The first consists of protecting the wasting banks and thus preventing 
the shifting of the channel, and by stopping the erosion to reduce the sediment. 
The second was to provide methods for narrowing the channel at the shallow 
places and thus causing the river to dredge them out itself and thus deepen the 
channel. The means adopted by the Commission in the Mississippi and by the 
engineers on the Missouri consists of a revetment of the wasting banks ; that is 
to say a mattress-work of willows and other brush is woven with wire and spread 
along the wasteing bank from the bottom of the channel to the low-water mark. 
Above this the steep bank is sloped. So far as this means has been applied on 
the Mississippi it has proven efficacious. Whether it will do so in the more 
sandy soil of the Missouri and under the erosive action of its more rapid current 
does not yet appear to have been fully demonstrated. The means employed in 
the second case — the deepening of the shallow — consists of the construction of 
jetties similar in character to those employed at South Pass for the restriction of 
the water and to procure its scouring efi"ects. This has proven efficacious in 
the Mississippi but has not yet been sufficiently tested in the Missouri. All who 
understand the stream, however, entertain a doubt of its efficacy, but the engi- 
neer in charge, .Major Charles R. Suter, is sanguine that it will provide in the 
Missouri a minimum depth of water of twelve feet. 
Another form of improvement required on the Mississippi, and perhaps on 
the Missouri also, consists of the closing of "chutes" or by-channels, at islands, 
so as to confine the water to one channel. This is done by driving piles across 
the heads of such channels and filling in between with brush up to the low-water 
level. This causes the river to form a bar in such channels below such works 
and thus with comparatively little work and expense, utilizes the river power to 
dam such channels. This has proven very efficacious in the Mississippi and 
can hardly do otherwise on the Missouri. 
The cost of the whole improvement cannot now be definitely estimated. It 
was at first supposed that $40,000,000 or $50,000,000 would be adequate for the 
Mississippi, and Major Suter estimated the cost of the improvement of the Mis- 
souri at $10,000 per mile, making a total of about $8,000,000 for that part of the 
river between Sioux City and St. Louis. Whether such sums will be adequate 
