150 



The valley floor and sides are occupied by an open, park-like forest, con- 

 sisting of oak, maple, elm, beech, hickory, basswood and other trees, mostly 

 from two to three feet in diameter. The smallest one is eighteen inches and 

 one beech is nearly four feet. The area has never been under the plow, 

 and has for many years been used as a pasture. Evidently the stream 

 channel is shifting rather rapidly from side to side, and the alluvial ma- 

 terial has not been deposited in thin layei's over the surface, but has been 

 transferred from one side of the channel to the other by lateral corrasion 

 and deposit. The trees do not check the process of lateral shifting in the 

 least. If the stream comes against one it undermines and tips it over as 

 readily as it cuts away its bank elsewhere. There is only one tree in the 

 valley more than about 100 years old and that stands near the foot of the 

 bluff. Therefore the infei'ence seems justified that a complete shifting of 

 the channel from side to side and a working over of all the alluvial ma- 

 terial takes place about once every century. 



The most puzzling question about this stream is the obvious one, what 

 makes it so crooked? At ordinary stages it carries almost no sediment, and 

 at flood it does not appear to be overloaded except on the inside of the 

 bends. The valley is straight, the flood water channel is very crooked and 

 the low water channel is still more crooked. The fall of the stream in 

 1,900 feet of length is seven feet, or at the rate of 19 feet per mile, and in 

 the upper 1,3G0 feet is 22. .5 feet per mile, which equals the average fall of 

 the Colorado river through the Grand Canyon. The fall in rhe lower 600 

 feet is 10.3 feet per mile. The slope of the valley floor in 1,150 feet is 32 

 feet per mile, but in the upper 650 feet is 42 feet per mile. Therefore the 

 stream is most crooked where the valley slope is steepest. Its law seems 

 to be, the crookedness varies directly as the steepness of valley slope. This 

 supports the conclusion of Jefferson that "maturely meandering streams 

 may be regarded as finding their slope too steep.'"- 



It works in easily eroded material and the extraordinarily crooked 

 portion of it is just where it ci-osses the belt of sand dunes. These facts 

 indicate that a temporary and local excess of load may be one of the 

 factors concerned in the problem. 



National Geograpliic ^fasrazino. Vol. 13, Page 373. 



