342 



University of California. 



[Vol. 3. 



Application to Kern Canon. — The fact that the kernbuts may 

 be thus consistently explained on the hypothesis of rifting and 

 the connected settlement of graben, adds an important link 

 to the chain of evidence connecting the origin of Kern Canon 

 with the process of crustal rifting. That such a connection is 

 very probable has been already shown on independent grounds; 

 and it has also been recognized that the adoption of the rift 

 hypothesis to explain the kernbuts necessarily involved the 

 canon as a whole in the same hypothesis. It remains to be 

 pointed out in what sense the Kern Canon is to be regarded as a 

 feature due to rifting. As a preliminary to this a distinction 

 must be drawn between rifting and faulting. We have no evi- 

 dence that the Upper Kern follows the trace of a fault plane. 

 There is no geomorphic or geological evidence of any differential 

 displacement of the country on either side of Kern Canon. 

 A fault may possibly exist there, but if it does it must have been 

 formed anterior to the evolution of the High Valleys of the region, 

 since there is no perceptible discrepancy in level between the two 

 portions of the Chagoopa Plateau separated by the canon. But 

 whether it exist or not is immaterial to the thesis that the Upper 

 Kern follows a line of rifting. 



At the time when the Chagoopa Plateau was at base level the 

 drainage of the Upper Kern Basin probably had little reference 

 to the present line of the Kern. The drainage probably, as already 

 shown, passed out through Toowa Valley. It seems probable 

 then, that there was no structural control of the drainage at that 

 particular stage of the geomorphic evolution of the region. This 

 view is supported by the fact already mentioned, that the defile 

 to the north of Trout Meadows, which is regarded as a graben, is 

 lower than the level of Little Kern Plateau, which is correlated 

 with Chagoopa Plateau and Toowa Valley. Now the down 

 cutting of the Upper Kern, below the level of the High Valleys, 

 was undoubtedly due to an uplift of the region, with renewed 

 dislocation along the great fault which bounds the Sierra Nevada 

 on the east. And, since the Kern seems to have followed its 

 present course since the initiation of the down cutting, the 

 structure which controlled that course must have been inaugu- 

 rated at the time of the uplift. The structure thus established 



