s, an
arrangement which involves the least expenditure of energy. Rocky
River, however, enters the Housatonic against the course of the
latter, that is, the tributary points upstream. Still River and other
southern tributaries of the Housatonic exhibit the same feature, thus
producing a barbed drainage, which indicates that some factor
interfered with the normal development of tributary streams. Barbed
drainage generally results from the reversal of direction of the
master stream[6], but it is impossible to suppose that the Housatonic
was ever reversed. As will appear, it is an antecedent master stream
crossing the crystalline rocks of western Connecticut regardless of
structure, and its course obliquely across the strike accounts for
the peculiar orientation of its southern tributaries, which are
subsequent streams whose position is determined by the nature of the
rock. For the same reason, the northern tributaries of the Housatonic
present the usual relations.

[Footnote 6: Leverett, Frank, Glacial formations and drainage features
of the Erie and Ohio basins: U. S. Geol. Survey Mon. 41, pp. 88-91,
figs. 1 and 2, 1902. See, also, the Genoa, Watkins, Penn Yan, and
Naples (New York) topographic atlas sheets.]

ABNORMAL PROFILE

The airline distance from the bend in Rocky River at Sherman to its
mouth at the Housatonic is 2-3/4 miles, but the course of the river
between these two points is 15 miles, or 5.4 times the airline
distance. This is a more extraordinary digression than that of
Tennessee River, which deserts its ancestral course to the Gulf and
flows northwest into the Ohio, multiplying the length of its course
3-1/3 times. The fall of Rocky River between Sherman and its mouth is
240 feet or 16 feet to the mile, and were the river able to take a
direct course the fall would be 87 feet to the mile. The possibility
of capture would seem to be imminent from these figures, but in
reality there is no chance of it, for an unbroken mountain ridge of
resistant rock lies between the two forks of the river. This barrier
is not likely to be crossed by any stream until the whole region has
been reduced to a peneplain.

Measured from the head of its longest branch, Rocky River is about 19
miles long and falls 950 feet. Of this fall, 710 feet occurs in the
first 4 miles and 173 feet in the last 2-1/2 miles of its course. For
the remaining distance of 12-1/2 miles, in which the river after
flowing south double