Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1919-12-09

the country, and they have made exhaustive
reports which tend to prove by the trees
just Whrre the river was in 1919.
An ecolOgist is a student of tree growth.
The growth Of a tree is registered in the
rings of wood which anyone may see in
stump. BY using a certain peculiar sort of
boring tool, an ecologist can get a cross sec
ton of a tree and count the number of rings
therein without cutting the tree down.
In a word, the biologists can learn the age
of every tree on that bit Of sandy flood plain.
The flood plain has the same soil everywhere
and all of it has been equally exposed to the
seeds Of the forest. If a tree hundred years
old is found, it is certain that the river has
not run in that spot for hundred years.
And if, on another strip of the land, all trees
are about thirty-fve years old, it is practically
certain that the river did run through that
strip about thirty-fve years ago.
By this process of tree study, the biologists
have traced all the wanderings of the river
for the past hundred years. They have very
clearly marked out about half dozen Of IS
channels, and have determined with an ac-
curacy which it is hard to question just about
the date at which it abandoned each OF those
channels for one. And this testimony
of the biologists does tend to establish the
claim of Oklahoma that in the year 1919,
when the old treaty was made, the Red river
ran several miles south of it's present course
at the point where the oil wells are.
Even if the state Of Oklahoma manages to
establish this point by expert testimony, as
it nows seems probable that it will, the case
is by no means won by that safe. For the
law enters into this matter as well as the
river. In the old days a great many rivers
were named as boundaries, and by their pecu-
liar pranks they have caused much litigation.
Virginia and Kentucky fought over the Ohio
river; Georgia and Tennessee wrangled as to
what the Chattahoochee did while one was
looking; Nebraska and Iowa fell out over the
irresponsible meanderings of the Missouri
river. And there have been numerous other
| cases of lesser Importance involving the ten
dency of rivers to steal land from one bank
and bestow it on the other
AS a result, an immense amount of legal
precedent has been built up about this whole
matter of land-stealing by rivers. Just as the
river has gone on carving channels and pll1ng
up layers of silt in highly confusing way, so
the lawyers and judges have been at work
piing up structure of precedent as mys-
FERROUS as the record of the river.
Thus it has repeatedly been held that there
are two ways in which river may steal land
from man or from stately accret1On or
| avulsion. II river which is the boundary
between two states slowly gnaws away part
| of one of them and adds corresponding
area to the other, it is held that the river is
still the boundary. The state that loses land
| is simply in hard luck and the state that
gains is in good luck.
This precedent is apparently justified by
| the facts that it is impossible accurately to
| follow or to determine a slow process of &C
erection, and that what is lost by state at
one point may be gained at another.
But if this same river, in a sudden freshet,
shifts it's course two miles, cutting a large
chunk of land off of ne state and adding an
equal amount to another, this process is call
ed avulsion, and it has always been held that
the boundary between the two states is just
| where it was before the freshet.
This legal distinction between accretion
and avulsion may seem clear and good to
you, or it may not. But it is plainly going
to allow the lawyers to do much brilliant
talking in the Red river case. For the ques-
ton naturally arises, did the Red river &C
crete did it avulse? The trees can tell
where it used to be, but they cannot tell how
it moved. Did it bite this valuable chunk out
of Oklahoma all at once or did it eat away
little by little?
The general conduct of the river would
seem to indicate that it is more inclined to
avulsion than to accretion. But it is evident
from the number of channels located by the
BIOLOGISTS that there must have been many
| successive avulsions. Now the question may
| we'll arise, does q long series Of avulsioLs
| amount to an accretion?
Thus you see what subtle thing is the
law, and how great matters may hang upon
a distinction as fine as the hair of frog.