770 GLACIAL FORMATIONS OF ERIE AND OHIO BASINS. 



doubtless represents the delta deposits of the stream during the Warren episode, 

 before the gorge was excavated. The waters occupied the preglacial valley of the 

 river, now possessed hj the Kishawa Creek as far as the village of Nunda, and 

 numerous teri'aces and plateaus in that valley are thought to represent the work of 

 those static waters. 



Fairchild also describes in the same paper a vpell-defined beacli on the 

 east side of the Grenesee Valley leading from near Geueseo northeastward to 

 Lima. Since publishing that paper he has noted evidences of the presence 

 of a body of water having the level of Lake WaiTen in the valleys of 

 several of the Finger lakes of western New York. 



In interpreting the lake history of that region he has called attention 

 to a succession of lakes in these valleys.^ The earliest lakes "were formed 

 as the ice sheet first began to recede from the southern end of the valleys. 

 They seem to have been very small and of short duration. As the ice 

 sheet withdrew passages were opened between the different valleys and a 

 common level for several lakes was established with an outlet across the 

 lowest pass to the south at Horseheads, N. Y. To the lake thus formed 

 Fairchild had earlier applied the name Lake Newberry,^ though at that 

 time he sup]DOsed it to be a successor of Lake Warren. As the glacial 

 retreat continued passages were opened between Lake Newberry and Lake 

 Warren, and the former took the level of the latter. The Lake Warren 

 waters appear to have advanced eastward with the retreat of the ice to the 

 vicinity of Marcellus, N. Y., before a passage eastward to^ the Mohawk 

 Valley became available. With the opening of this passage the lake level 

 was lowered and Lake Warren closed its history. 



The channel near Marcellus, which afforded a new outlet for the lake 

 waters, was first brought to notice by Gilbert in connection with other 

 channels in western New York,^ but it remained for Fairchild to discuss the 

 relations to Lake Warren. In the more recent of the two papers above 

 cited Fairchild makes the following statements: 



Two miles south of Marcellus village a huge delta lies on the west side of the 

 valley [Otisco], at the mouth of a great channel cut in the Hamilton shales. The 

 topographic sheet gives the height of the delta terraces as 860 down to 800 feet. 

 The delta is the debris derived from the excavation of the gorge and dropped by the 



1 Bull. Geol. Soc. America, Vol. X, 1899, pp. 27-68. 

 ''Ibid., Vol. VI, 1895, pp. 462-466. 



'Old tracks of Brian drainage in western New York: Bull. Geol. Soc. America, Vol. VIII, 1897 

 pp. 285-286. 



