100 W. M. DAVIS RELATION OF GEOGRAPHY TO GEOLOGY 



To continue : "The valleys of the highland show that a renewed uplift 

 gave the whole region a greater altitude than before, with a gentle up- 

 arching along a north-south axis in the mountain area 15 or 20 miles west 

 of the monocline, whereby the peneplain with its monadnocks gained the 

 highland altitude of the present Front Eange, the crest of the up-arching 

 and the monadnocks that happened to stand near the crest defining in a 

 general way the crest of the range." All of this is immediately pertinent 

 in presenting in an explanatory manner the form and attitude of the 

 highland at the beginning of the present cycle, this initial form being the 

 penultimate form of the preceding cycle, now uplifted to a new position. 

 The description goes on further as follows : "The weaker strata of the 

 plains are now again worn down to small relief," and from this we gain a 

 general conception of the denuded plains truncating the monoclinal 

 strata near the mountain border and stretching eastward indefinitely ; but 

 "the harder crystalline rocks of the mountainous highland are only sub- 

 maturely dissected by normal submature or mature valleys" — that is, 

 parts of the peneplain, surmounted by its monadnocks, must still be 

 recognizable in rolling highlands between valleys, some of which, being 

 described as submature, must be conceived as narrow and rock-walled, 

 while others, described as mature, must be imagined as being more open, 

 with waste-cloaked sides. The closing clause states that "the higher parts 

 of the valleys have recently been strongly glaciated," and this at once 

 suggests the excavation of cirques in the valley heads among the loftier 

 monadnocks along the range crest and the transformation of the upper 

 valleys into overdeepened and widened glacial troughs with oversteepened 

 sides. 



TEE EXPANSION OF CONDENSED PHRASES INTO THEIR FULL MEANING 



It must be apparent from the foregoing that the true geographical 

 value of a condensed explanatory description can be reached only by ex- 

 panding or translating each technical term or phrase into its full meaning 

 with respect to the features of the existing landscape. The 'more success- 

 fully the translation is made the more fully will the reader's attention be 

 brought forward from past conditions and processes to existing forms, 

 and the more fully will the really geographical nature of this apparently 

 geological description stand forth. An experienced reader can translate 

 at sight; an inexperienced reader must give some time before he can ex- 

 plicitly state all the meaning that technical terms and phrases implicitly 

 contain. In either case an attentive study will show that every element 

 of the explanatory description of the Front Eange bears immediately and 

 helpfully on its present form, with the possible exception of a statement 



