edie sare : a, 
Major Lachlan on the Rise and Fall of the Lakes. 173 
them to their usual flow? or are they permanently diminishing ? 
I am inclined to believe that the latter is the case, as cultivation 
been rivulets, and even rivers of some size, as their banks cut 
through alluvial soils plainly indicate. * * * Perhaps, 
whenever a cycle of years occurs, in which the northeast wind 
them. But what vast atmospheric agencies must have been at 
Work when such wonderful results on the smaller Lakes have 
n made evident !” 
“ What a useful thing,” further observes Sir Richard, “it 
would have been, if scientific navigators, or resident observers had 
registered the rise and fall of the Lakes in the years since Can- 
came into our possession.” i 
ong other unconnected notes I find also some judicious re- 
marks, extracted from McGregor’s British America ;* but from 
these I must be content to quote only the following, as referring 
a hypothesis which 1 have long been disposed to regard as not 
altogether irreconcilable with the geological formation of the 
asins of the middle and lower lakes, though perhaps not so with 
the structure of the Lake Superior regions; it being doubted 
Whether, notwithstanding the great annual evaporation, the vol- 
ume of water discharged by Lake Erie does sufficiently account 
for the vast united supply received by it from the immense triple 
urces of Lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron. 
* See McGregor’s British America, vol. i, pp- 131 to 133. 
. 
