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University of California. 



[Vol. 3. 



not more than 1200 feet. The walls of the canon are about 

 twice this height, and the lateral recession of this upper portion 

 of the walls, in consequence of the glacial sapping or scour at 

 their base, could only have been by a process of shedding rock 

 fragments upon the surface of the glacier. These fragments 

 would accumulate at the terminal moraine. But the volume of 

 the two terminal moraines together does not exceed 2,100,000 

 cubic yards. If we distribute this over the upper 1200 feet of 

 both walls of the canon, for the distance of 14 miles from the 

 Kern-Kaweah River to the main terminal moraine, it would make 

 a layer four inches thick. If we consider that probably half of 

 the moraine came from sources outside of the canon, the layer 

 would be reduced to two inches. This estimate may be modified 

 and corrected in a variety of ways, but it leaves a quantity for 

 the glacial widening of the canon which is negligible. The canon 

 then, had practically the same width before its occupancy by ice 

 that it has to-day. 



Tributary Glaciers. — The trunk glacier of the Kern was fed 

 by numerous tributary ice streams, each having several branches, 

 all heading in more or less pronounced cirques, the most of 

 which are situated at the crest of the mountains which rim the 

 basin. Besides these tributary glaciers there were many others 

 which were too short to reach the Kern. The former existence of 

 these glaciers is established beyond question by the usual evidence 

 of the occupation of a region by Alpine glaciers. Vast cirques 

 with stepped floors, each step with its rock-rimmed tarn and its 

 roclie moutonnee sculpture; bare rock surfaces polished, grooved 

 and striated, and strewn with erratics; lower down, the splen- 

 didly defined U-shaped profiles of the canons, with their occasional 

 meadows; and lastly, the immense lateral moraines which flank 

 the lower and more open parts of the canons, — all these features 

 are in every case present to attest the course of these tributary 

 glaciers and the work that they did. 



The most southerly tributary glacier on the east side of the 

 Kern is that of Rock Creek to the south of Mt. Guyot. This 

 glacier had two main branches, one coming down Guyot Creek 

 in the U-shaped trough shown in Plate 33 a, and the other down 

 the north fork of Rock Creek, the path of which is shown in 



