Page:The National geographic magazine, volume 1.djvu/272

 dependent on the size and slope of the streams and the resistance of the rocks, the streams will be more or less re-arranged, some of the larger ones persisting in their courses and cutting their channels down almost as fast as the mass below them is raised and offered to their action. It is manifest that streams of large volume and considerable slope are the ones most likely to persevere in this way, while small streams and large ones of moderate slope may be turned from their former courses to new courses consequent on the new constructional form of the land. Hence, after a disturbance, we may expect to find the smaller streams of the former cycle pretty completely destroyed, while some of the larger ones may still persist; these would then be called antecedent streams in accordance with the nomenclature introduced by Powell. A fuller acquaintance with the development of our rivers will probably give us examples of river systems of all degrees of extinction or persistence at times of disturbance.

Since Powell introduced the idea of antecedent valleys and Tietze, Medlicott and others showed the validity of the explanation in other regions than the one for which it was first proposed, it has found much acceptance. Löwl's objection to it does not seem to me to be nearly so well founded as his suggestion of an additional method of river development by means of backward headwater erosion and subsequent capture of other streams, as already described. And yet I cannot help thinking that the explanation of transverse valleys as antecedent courses savors of the Gordian method of explaining a difficult matter. The case of the Green river, to which Powell first gave this explanation, seems well supported; the examples given by Medlicott in the Himalayas are as good: but still it does not seem advisable to explain all transverse streams in this way, merely because they are transverse. Perhaps one reason why the explanation has become so popular is that it furnishes an escape from the old catastrophic idea that fractures control the location of valleys, and is at the same time fully accordant with the ideas of the uniformitarian school that have become current in this half of our century. But when it is remembered that most of the streams of a region are extinguished at the time of mountain growth, that only a few of the larger ones can survive, and that there are other ways in which transverse streams may originate, it is evi-