292 Dr Clinton on certain phenomena of 



These are the only authorities of an old date to which I 

 have had access. Those which I now refer to are of recent 

 observation, and some are derived from oral communication. 

 Mr Benjamin Wright, a very judicious and intelligent gentle- 

 man, and one of the principal engineers on the Western Canal, 

 informs me, that at a place called Mexico, about twenty miles 

 from Oswego, Lake Ontario ebbs and flows every hour and a 

 half about six inches, and that the flood is highest when the 

 wind is from the shore. 



A gentleman of veracity and intelligence, who resides at the 

 mouth of Genesee River, says that this lake rises and falls 

 four times each in every hour, whether there be a wind or 

 not : that the smallest rise is four, and the highest twenty- 

 eight inches, and that this occurs during a perfect calm. 



A similar appearance occurs on Lake Champlain. Captain 

 Winans, one of the proprietors of the steam-boats, who re- 

 sides at Burlington, in Vermont, assures me that in summer, 

 when there has been a perfect calm for several days, he has 

 observed at that place a flux and reflux of the lake four times 

 every hour, with great regularity, and at every access rising 

 four inches, as was obvious from a mark made on a log. 



Captain Storrow, a gentleman of talents, says, in a printed 

 letter to General Brown, " while at Green Bay I made ob- 

 servations on the ebb and flow of a lake tide. At eleven 

 oVlock A. M. I placed a stick perpendicularly in the water, — 

 at half past nine p. m. the water had risen five inches, — at 

 eight next morning it had fallen seven inches, — at eight same 

 evening it had risen eight inches. During this period the 

 wind was in the same direction, blowing generally against the 

 flow of the tide." 



Judge Woodward, of Michigan, in a letter to Doctor Mit- 

 chill, states, that Mr Benjamin F. Stickney, who resides on the 

 Miami River of Lake Erie, some miles below the rapids, and 

 a few miles from the mouth of the river, made observations on 

 this subject for more than a fortnight, in June 1820 ; the re- 

 sult of which is a conviction in his mind that there is a regular 

 tide in Lake Erie — that it flows and ebbs twice in twenty-five 

 hours, at intervals of about six hours and eleven minutes, and 

 that it is greatest at the new and full moons, and least at the 



