ISO 



THE MUSEUM. 



Owing to this peculiar direction in 

 length /. r. , from northeast to south- 

 west, the westerly wdnds generate 

 waves, which though rolling toward 

 the east, yet continually break, in part, 

 against the southern shore; consequent- 

 ly that shore-line is perfectly free from 

 any growth of water-plants; while on 

 the northern side which is in part pro- 

 tected by a high bluff, there are a few 

 places where lilies and rushes have 

 found a lodgement, and a large area 

 of many acres formerly an open bay 

 has been in past time completely filled, 

 and thanks to the lowering of the level 

 of the lake in recent years this tract 

 has partly been brought under cultiva- 

 tion. The filling of this bay has how- 

 ever been expedited by the quantity of 

 detritus and silt brought down by the 

 Kayaderosseras Creek, a stream of con- 

 siderable size which here enters the 

 lake. 



When a lake of the class first men- 

 tioned is met with, /. e., one in which 

 the process of invasion by vegetable 

 growth is yet in actual progress; — a 

 swampy tract enclosing an open sheet 

 of water which is generally, though 

 not always, centrally located;— we find 

 such swamp-bordered lakelets to be 

 generally difficult of access. The sur- 

 rounding marsh being a tangle of cran- 

 berry vines, lilies and sphagnum, with 

 here and there a stunted tamarack. 

 Progress on foot over such a tract is 

 both slow aud dangerous, nearly every 

 foot-print made immediately fills with 

 water, and if one persists in reaching 

 the border of the enclosed lake great 

 caution is necessary, for the nearer we 

 get to open water the thinner and less 

 coherent do we find our mat of 

 vines. If by great good luck we do 

 not tread on some unusually thin place 



— slip through, down and out of sight; 

 in the under-muck — if we reach the 

 water's edge in safety, we may find 

 that the entangled mat of vines form- 

 ing this strange sort of a shore actual- 

 ly floats on the water. Regarding 

 this singular property of sphagnous 

 growth I will take the liberty to quote 

 a few lines from Prof. N. S. Shaler's 

 interesting and valuable paper on the 

 fresh-water morasses of the United 

 States loth Annual U. S. Geologi- 

 cal Survey, pp. 285-287: 



"This is due in part to the fact that sphag- 

 nuiii can tolerate water more perfectly than 

 any]otherJof our'iinportant palustrine forms of 

 plants, aud in part to the peculiarity of its 

 Labit, which enables it to grow rapidly and. 

 form a thick sheet of vegetation without any 

 of its roots being embedded in the under soil, 

 they may remain pendant in the water.'' * * 



♦ * ' As the sphagnum grows from its first 

 lodgement on the shore outwardly towards 

 the center of the lake, the mat it forms floats 

 upon the water and constantly contril)utes 

 the waste of its dead stems to the peaty ac- 

 cumulation which takes place upon the bot- 

 tom of the basin. In this way, providing the 

 pool be not originally deep, u requires but a 

 few thousand years to close over the surface 

 and reduce the original expanse of water io 

 the condition of quaking bog. In this i-tate 

 the basin is covered by a continuous sheet of 

 sphagnum dense enough often 10 atTord a 

 lodgement to many other aquatic plants, the 

 mass continually thickens, and the sheet sinks- 

 gradually towards the bottom of the water." 



Some few years ago while camping 

 at one of the southern Adirondack 

 lakes, accompanied by two friends 1 

 visited a morass of this description 

 with its enclosed lakelet. This partic- 

 ular example varied somewhat from 

 the ideal standard, in that the lakelet 

 was not centrally situated in the morass 

 but yet retained on one side its primi- 

 tive shore-line; a low ridge of archean 

 rock whose broken cliffs descend to the 

 water's edge and probably far below. 

 The depth of water along this rocky 



