Major Lachlan on the Riseand Fall of the Lakes. 45 
Art. IV.—On the Periodical Rise and Fall of the Lakes; by 
Masor Lacuian.* 
(Concluded from vol. xix, p. 175.) 
Leavine any further remarks on the foregoing for a future prob- 
able opportunity, I may here briefly observe, that I have long 
been persuaded that the severity of our winters is mitigated by 
the proximity:of the Lakes, and is not so much owing to the 
prevalence of winds from the northwest, as a mere northerly a 
point of the compass, or to the remarkable curve of the great iso- 
thermal line in this part of the globe, as to the winds alluded to 
sweeping down from a more elevated region, many parts of the 
extensive mountainous tract of eobntiy stretching i in that’ direc- 
tion being perhaps thousands of feet above the level of Lake Su- 
perior, and even the latter not being less than 600 = above that 
of the ocean. 
_ Nearly the whole of the conflicting evidence” Ficatine on the 
various points at issue having been adduced, 1 proceed to state 
freely, yet as briefly as sesiee> ite mode of proceeding adopted 
by me, in my endeavor to arr é convictions to which I 
have been thereby led with we to each of the three questions 
to be determined. 
o commence with. the first of these, namely, the traditional 
report of there being a septennial rise and fall in the waters of the 
~ great Lakes, &c., I have to remark, that being unwilling to ad- 
mit any assertions on so interesting and mysterious a phenome- 
non without thorough examination and comparison with facts, I, 
after much reflection, determined to attempt to form from the 
materials in my possession a general comparativé*tabular view 
of the positively known, oa failing that, generally acknowl- 
edged, periods of elevation and depression throughout the whole 
of the Lakes, during the longest ascertai series of years; in 
the hope of thereby arriving at something like an approximation 
to the real state of the matter: but after laboring long and pa- 
tiently at the unsatisfactory task, I was at last obliged to abandon 
it and confine my synopsis to Lake Erie alone, and even then to 
add various “ Miscellaneous Remarks” for the mention of any ap- 
parent coincidence, or otherwise, in the state of the other Lakes 
— in this ‘ — to persevere till, after much labor, I so far 
ceed shown in the following copious yet imperfect 
Table, sihibiting not only the various progressive and retrogres- 
sive annual fluctuations in the level of that particnlar Lake during 
a course of sixty-three years, as ae ta by the different highly 
respectable authorities named, but also proving, incidentally, how 
far that long received traditional ae enon, the rise and fall of 
the Lakes generally every seven deeb is in accordance with the 
evidence furnished by recorded facts 
* From the Canadian Sousa’ July, 1854, 
