The National geographic magazine . mean meander ratio is 17.6.Study would doubtless remove some ofthe discordancies. The Rhine nearSpeyer and Worms, as the accompany-ing map shows, is a corrected stream,flowing in an artificial channel. Thewidth of the meander belt may be meas-ured from the old course, which stillsubsists, but the width of the river,measured on the artificial channel,which is confined between walls, isprobably less than that of the uncor-rected stream that made the meanders.This must tend to give an excessivevalue to the meander ratio. It is interesting to observe in the caseo

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The National geographic magazine . mean meander ratio is 17.6.Study would doubtless remove some ofthe discordancies. The Rhine nearSpeyer and Worms, as the accompany-ing map shows, is a corrected stream,flowing in an artificial channel. Thewidth of the meander belt may be meas-ured from the old course, which stillsubsists, but the width of the river,measured on the artificial channel,which is confined between walls, isprobably less than that of the uncor-rected stream that made the meanders.This must tend to give an excessivevalue to the meander ratio. It is interesting to observe in the caseof the Rhine that the flood-plain widthis not far from the width of the maxi-mum meander belt. The small ratio for the Mississippi atBaton Rouge is of interest with theopener character of the meanders in thelower course, where each arm of theriver seems to point away from the nextarm upstream instead of swinging aroundtoward it. A little farther and theriver stops swinging, to rush headlong Limiting Width of Meander Belts 381 Oo p.. 38 The National Geographic Magazine to the Gulf. The same opening out ofmeanders is noticed at Teesmouth andat the mouth of Seine and Dniester.The Panaro and Tagliamento comefrom their mountains overburdened withwaste, and flow where it encumbersthem in braided courses. The mean-dering stretch examined for each comesjust below. The facts ascertained by an exami-nation of incised rivers are of suffi-cient interest to be now summarizedin Table B. The ratios run high. The averageis 30.6. Of all single rivers studied,