JOHNSON: TALLULAH DISTRICT. 
215 
“ remote changes shown in the streams of the Atlantic slope,’’ in a 
paper entitled “Drainage modifications,” wrote as follows: “These 
minor streams have not only arranged themselves parallel with the 
line of greatest slope, but they have also extended their courses head- 
wards, until at one point they are within a mile of the Chattahoochee 
River and at least 100 feet below it. At this point, which is in the 
vicinity of Gainesville, Georgia, the capture of the Chattahoochee 
is imminent, and if conditions remain unchanged, will doubtless be 
accomplished in the near geologic future. In the vicinity of Tallu¬ 
lah Falls the same process has been carried on, but in this case it has 
reached completion, and the Savannah River has cut through the 
divide and captured the portion which formerly constituted the head¬ 
waters of the Chattahoochee.” 
In the report of the Division of hydrography of the United States 
geological survey, relative to “Operations at river stations in 1899,” 
there occurs a brief reference to the rivers of the Tallulah region 
including a short account of the Tallulah Falls. 
Science for July, 1900, contains a short paper by Dr. C. Willard 
Hayes and Marius R. Campbell, entitled “The relation of biology 
to physiography,” and another paper by Charles T. Simpson, “On 
the evidence of the Unionidae regarding the former courses of the 
Tennessee and other southern rivers.” The former paper serves as 
an introduction to the latter, and while both are concerned chiefly 
with the supposed capture of the upper Tennessee River near Chatta¬ 
nooga, both contain references to the capture in the Tallulah district. 
In previous papers, Hayes and Campbell had advocated the theory 
that the upper Tennessee formerly flowed southward from Chatta¬ 
nooga into the Gulf by way of the Coosa and Alabama Rivers, but 
was diverted to the western drainage at a point near Chattanooga; 
that the headwaters of the Etowah River, a tributary to the Coosa, 
had in a similar manner been diverted to the Chattahoochee drainage; 
and that the upper Chattahoochee had likewise been diverted to the 
Savannah system, in the vicinity of Tallulah Falls. Simpson found 
molluscs very similar to the Tennessee River forms in the Coosa 
system, and molluscs similar to both Tennessee and Coosa forms in 
the Chattahoochee and Savannah Rivers, as well as molluscs of the 
Savannah drainage in the Chattahoochee River. From this he was 
led to support the theory of the captures, as the diversion of the streams 
referred to would effect the transference of their molluscan faunas 
