218 Outo StaTE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
much farther. At one place the muck under the bar was found 
to extend to a depth of 18 feet below water level. In the lake 30 
rods from shore the muck extends to a depth of 10 to 13 feet 
along a line parallel to shore more than 60 rods in length. In 
the deepest place it doubtless is quite as deep as under the bar, 
18 feet, though where borings were made, the clay was not more 
than 13 feet from the surface. 
Much of this submerged bog had but a few inches to a foot 
or two of sand over it when I examined it in February and 
March, 1904. 
At two or three places in the lake between the Carrying 
Ground and Rye Beach unsuccessful attempts have been made 
to push the auger after turning it some distance into the sand. 
A little more than two miles from Rye Beach the auger was 
turned down to 9 feet below top of ice and turned more easily 
the last two feet than nearer the surafce, as if the muck still 
remained, but with sand enough in it, to prevent pushing the 
auger through it. In driving stakes for fish nets more than a 
hundred rods off shore a mile and a half or so southeast of the 
mouth of the black channel Captain Steible tells me they used 
to strike what they believed to be muck. A large blunt stake 
would rebound and penetrate but little at each blow. This was 
where the water was sixteen feet or more in depth. He has seen 
along the beach when the water was low a sheet of muck two or 
three rods long. The sand usually prevents one from seeing any 
muck until it is washed ashore. 
In the season of low water from 1891-1901 there was prob- 
ably no encroachment on the marsh excepting that produced by 
the wind, and the trees along the shore of the marsh show that 
there has been no general encroachment for several decades. 
But the northeasters at time of the high water of 1858-1862, 
swept away the trees, and moved the whole bar over onto the 
marsh. Allen Remington remembers one cottonwood in partic- 
ular, which served as a landmark for fishermen, much larger 
than any tree now on the bar. It stood not far from the mouth 
of the Black Channel and about 1856 was nearer the bay shore 
but when he began fishing, 1859, was about midway between 
the bay and the lake. Ina few years more the beach had moved 
to it and it fell into the lake. At the point where this large cot- 
tonwood stood the encroachment on the marsh prior to 1857 
could not have amounted to much during the life of this tree, else 
the shore of the marsh would have been farther from the tree 
but the fact that throughout much of the length of the bar there 
were no large trees probably indicates that it had not remained 
stationary for a great length of time. 
