Notice of Floating Islands. 128 
ters of willow trees of small growth. These rise and fall 
with the island. The pond is usually dry during the sum- 
mer months, and at these seasons the island has been found 
pond’s bottom, owing to the rains that have recently fallen. 
The customary rise of the pond in the fall and spring, is 
about 8 feet, although it has been known to rise 12: the isl- 
and preserves the same elevation above the surface of the wa- 
ter in the different periods of its rise. I have been told, to- 
day, by a man of unequivocal veracity, that he has forced a 
pole, ten feet in length, down through the centre of the isl- 
and, and with this, as far as he could extend it with his arm, has 
been unable to meet with a solid and permanent bottom. 
He also informed me, that when the pond was very high, 
these large trees standing upon the margin of the island, 
from the solid s below. In passing across its surface, 
the whole island is considerably agitated, and presents a way- 
once to have been a subject of much notoriety, but appears to 
have escaped the notice and knowledge of many of our m 
townsmen. I was unacquainted with it myself, until yester- 
day, though I have skated frequently round it. This may 
lead some to think that this statement is an exaggeration, but 
it is not so: The real fact is not to be discovered by one 
observation ; they should be repeated at different sea on of 
the year, when the pond is dry and when itis full, or it may 
be visited by a thousand different persons at asm n_ diff-r- 
ent times, and no remarkable phenomena appear, I have 
