Peneplains of the Ozark Highland. — Hershey. 35 
but 15 stiil noticeable. Near Bunceton, in Cooper county, La- 
fayette remnants occur about two-thirds of the distance from 
the vallery bottoms to the hill-tops. At this Ie\-el there are 
frequently distinguishable "shoulders" or benches on the hill- 
.slopes, and sometimes there occur in the valleys ridges whose 
truncated summits He no higher than the Lafayette base-level. 
When one's attention is once called to it, it is not difficult to 
recognize the "trotisrh within a trough" character of these val- 
leys. 
In apj>roaching the Osage river, the countn,- becomes ex- 
tremely broken. The remnants of the Tertiary peneplain be- 
come isolated into widely separated elongated ridges and small 
flat-topped peaks, none of which approach verv- closely to the 
river. The steep, rocky ridges which bound the narrow and 
very crooked canyon valley represent, in a verv- imperfect man- 
ner, the Lafayette base-level, here also about seventy-five feet 
below the main Tertiary- or 'Tennesseean" base-level. That 
the tops of these "river-hills" actually represent a plane of 
stream erosion is indicaterl hy a curious depressed area or val- 
ley among the hills about four and one-half miles north of 
Lime creek. Here the canyon valley of the Osage makes a 
great bend to the southward and encloses a peninsula-shaped 
tract of upland. A considerable portion of one of the higher 
ridges (a remnant of the Tertiarj' peneplain) is cut off by 
a distinct valley or depression in the hills, having a width of 
about one mile, a depth of seventy-five feet, and steep slopes 
like an ordinan.- river valley, but whose bottom is dissected 
by transverse ravines just as all the remainder of the upland 
is. This abandoned valley connects the basin valley above 
the great bend with that portion below it, and during the 
I^fayette period undoubtedly was occupied by the Osage 
river. This valley, the hill-tops along the Osage, and the 
remnants of Lafayette stream-gravels in Gx>per count>', unite 
in fixing the Lafayette base-level of erosion in central Mis- 
souri at a level only seventy-five feet below the main Tertiary 
{x.-neplain, and all that portion of the valleys of greater depth 
than this is essentially Ozarkian in age. 
In southwestern Miss/^>uri, in Jasper and neighboring 
counties, the declivity of the streams is not great, and the val- 
leys are broad and without the canyon form except ven,- local- 
