HANGING VALLEYS 233 



aside and forced to cut a narrower gorge apparently entirely of post- 

 Glacial age. While this condition of hanging valleys is present in a 

 number of the tributaries, it is most typically illustrated in East Virgil 

 creek, west of Messengerville on the Harford sheet, and in an unnamed 

 creek on the east side of the valley about 2 miles south of Blodgett Mills 

 on the Cortland sheet. It is in these two valleys that the buried gorge 

 sections are found. 



Other hanging valleys. — In a number of places on the Watkins Glen 

 quadrangle there are hanging valleys, though in most cases not as typical 

 as those described above. More or less completely drift- filled gorges cut 

 in rock benches across the valley mouths, and changing upstream to broad, 

 mature valleys are common. This condition is illustrated very clearly 

 in a number of the tributaries to Cayuta creek between Van Etten and 

 Waverly. In the work on this folio it has not been possible to carefully 

 investigate each of the suspected hanging valleys, and therefore it can 

 not be stated just how many such valleys there are; but enough have 

 been proved to exist to demonstrate that the hanging valley condition 

 is widespread in this region. Far the most perfect examples are those 

 of the Cayuga and Seneca troughs, but the instances in the Tiougnioga 

 and Cayuta valleys are just as certainly instances of hanging valleys. 

 Extension of these studies to other areas and correlation of the results 

 obtained will, it is hoped, warrant interpretation not now possible. 



LOWERED DIVIDES 



General conditions. — One of the most striking features in the topography 

 of the divide region between the Saint Lawrence and Susquehanna 

 drainage is the marked absence of well defined divides between the 

 larger streams which head in this region. Along a number of valleys 

 it is possible to pass from one drainage system to the other through open 

 valleys in which the present divides are determined not by rock but by 

 drift deposits. A similar condition is found between the headwaters of 

 the larger tributaries on each side of the main divide; and even in the 

 case of the smaller tributaries there is frequently a condition of lowered 

 divides. i\\ discussing this paper at the Geological Society meeting 

 in Philadelphia Professor Davis applied the very descriptive name of 

 " through valleys " to this condition of valleys connected across lowered 

 divides. 



Accompanying this condition there has been much diversion of drain- 

 age across the lowered divides, so that it is very frequently the case that 

 the present divide does not coincide with an earlier position. This is 

 proved by the fact that streams frequently head on drift deposits in a 



