. 
.1; 
dual 
:bl 
EROSION. 35 
[into Lake Champlain, and Housatonic River, which flows southward 
into Long Island Sound. The Kinderhook, Hoosic, and Batten Kill 
flow more or less westerly into the Hudson, and the Mettawee and 
Poultney similarly into Lake Champlain. All these westerly flowing- 
streams have made easterly cuts into or completely across the schist 
range. In the latter case, however, they have had the aid of streams 
on the eastern side of the range. The Hoosic and Batten Kill drain 
portions of the Green Mountain Range, reaching to the watershed of 
the Deerfield River and thus to that of the Connecticut. The area 
under consideration thus embraces parts of the basins of Lake Cham- 
plain and of the Hudson, the Connecticut, and the Housatonic rivers. 
The boundaries of these basins are indicated on the map. 
The first effect of the elevation of such a folded reo-ion above sea 
level must have been the collection of rain water in the synclinal 
troughs and the flawing of streams down the sides of the anticlines. 
The inclination of the axes of the synclines being less than that of the 
sides of the anticlines, the erosive power of the longitudinal streams 
must have been far less than that of the former. Transverse cuts 
on the anticlines, therefore, were formed first and the longitudinal 
streams eventually became tributaries of the transverse ones. As the 
anticlines became reduced to valleys, the synclines remained as moun- 
tains, to be in turn cut by transverse streams, so that the drainage 
of both anticlinal valleys and synclinal mountains was carried west- 
ward in the direction of the decreasing folds to the Hudson-Cham- 
plain valley. It is apparent from the present drainage lines and from 
the position of the watershed of the Taconic Range on its eastern 
margin and, in places, even farther east on the Green Mountain 
ilitj Range, that the erosion of the Taconic Range has been done chiefly 
on the west. The transverse cuts are evidence of the long duration 
of erosive processes.* 
The greater solubility of the limestone anticlines and synclines, 
when once denuded of their overlying schist, perpetuated the courses 
of the longitudinal streams and tended to increase the width of their 
valleys. The due east-west course of the Hoosic between the Green 
Mountain spur and Greylock seems to have been determined by the 
presence of limestone between underlying quartzite on the north and 
overlying schist on the south, all with a southerly pitch. 
Glacial and post-Glacial deposits have modified the ancient drain- 
age. The choking of narrow valleys by moraines and the deposit of 
sheets of sediment by glacial lakes in wider ones must have given the 
new streams much work to do, and probably, *in some places, pre- 
vented them from returning to the channels of the pre-Glacial ones. 
The influence of these later formations is very noticeable in the 
Hudson-Champlain valley. Thus the Hoosic, when it reaches the 
a Lowl, F., Uber Tbalbildung, 1884, Prague, p. 105. 
