The Prndncth'ily of Fish Food m Oneida Lake 31 



The terrace which borders the south shore of Lower Soutli 

 Bay is the most conspicuous part of the landscape and the 

 summer cottagers have taken advantage of this natural feature 

 and have used it as a site for their summer residences. Many 

 an ardent angler has thus built his summer home on the high 

 and dry terrace formed and left by the waters of this ancient 

 lake and has tasted the delights of being a successful fisher- 

 man in the lake left by the receding waters of this old outlet. 

 In this, as in many another instance, the forces of nature have 

 provided man with both a building site, a pleasure ground, and 

 a place from which to gather a food supply both abundant and 

 easily secured. 



The basin of Lower South Bay is comparatively shallow, 

 being saucer-shaped, as is the basin of the entire lake, a feature 

 well shown in the profiles, figures 3 and 4. A subaqueous lake 

 terrace is present in some places, usually where the water is 

 active and where the material of the bottom is sand, gravel, 

 or boulders. In a very few cases the slope of this subaqueous 

 terrace is very steep, examples being shown in sections A, F, 

 J, and L of the profiles. Several of these steep slopes border 

 shoals which have been formed ofif points. In this character 

 of the slope Oneida Lake differs radically from the deep lakes 

 of the Finger Lake group, and the deep lakes of Wisconsin, 

 where the slope is as steep as sand will lie (Birge and Juday 

 '12; Reighard '13, pp. 119-222). The subaqueous lake terrace 

 bordering the shore in the vicinity of Lower South Bay is 300 

 or 400 feet in width and the water deepens gradually to six 

 feet where it suddenly drops to 12 feet. On shoals and bor- 

 dering Dunham and Frenchman Islands, the slope in some 

 cases drops suddenly into deep water, the terrace being very 

 narrow and steep (see A, J, and L of profiles). 



In Lower South Bay there are no subaqueous terraces of this 

 character, except bordering the points and shoals. The shores 

 slope graviually and more or less uniformly into deeper water, 

 the gradient being about a foot in 200 feet or half of one per 

 cent (see profiles A to J). The greater part of the bay is a 

 level area of fairly uniform depth. The profiles show a grad- 

 ual deepening toward the east end of the bay where a depth 



