THE 



AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 



[FOURTH SERIES.] 



Art. XXXIY. — Buried Channels Beneath the Hudson and 

 its Tributaries / by J. F. Kemp. 



The Hudson river lias afforded to previous observers prob- 

 lems of more than ordinary physiographic interest. The dis- 

 sected peneplain, which the Highlands about West Point 

 present to those who look abroad from any of the neighboring 

 summits, is one of the best exhibitions of this land-form, easily 

 accessible to routes of travel. Although the Highlands appear 

 from the surface of the river to be a range of mountains, from 

 the summits themselves the group becomes an incised plateau 

 forming part of the Schooley peneplain, first identified in New 

 Jersey to the southwest by W. M. Davis and J. W. Wood, Jr.* 

 This peneplain probably marked the closing of a cycle of 

 drainage fairly coincident with the Cretaceous period. An 

 uplift subsequently revived the streams and the Tertiary cycle 

 began. The traces of the latter are still visible along the Hud- 

 son in rocky terraces, which stand out with marked conformity 

 as a series of shelves, best shown in the western bank and 

 especially prominent in the cold season. A walk from Fish- 

 kill to Peekskill on a crisp winter's day, when the foliage no 

 longer masks the relief, will serve to bring out many points 

 not visible in the months of leaves. 



Having excavated the broader valley outlined by these 

 shelves, the river was obviously again revived and eroded, 

 within the older limits, the narrower channel of whose details 

 we are just now gaining possession. They piece out in part a 

 missing or fragmentary chapter in its history, the one which 

 relates to the time antedating the invasion of the continental 

 glacier. As will be shown, they corroborate the previously 



*The Geographic Development of Northern New Jersey, Proc. Boston Soc. 

 Nat. Hist., xxiv, 365, 1890. Also W. M. Davis, The Catskill Delta in the 

 post-Glacdal Hudson Estuary, idem., xxv, 818, 1892. 



Am. Jour. Sci. — Fourth Series, Vol. XXVI, No. 154. — October, 1908. 

 90 



