TORREYA 



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November, 1907 

 Vol. 7. No. II. 



LIBRAI 



A VISIT TO LETCHWORTH PARK ^ew YC 



By George V. Nash BOTANK 



T • . , r ^T ^r 1 • , • GARDE 



Lying in the western part 01 JNew York state, m the counties 

 of Wyoming and Livingston, is a wild and picturesque country, 

 'through which the Genesee River wends its way. Here, in a 

 strife which was begun in ages past and which is still con- 

 tinued between the waters and the land, this river has cut for it- 

 self, in a portion of its course, a deep gorge between two and 

 three miles long. In this distance the river has a fall of about 

 three hundred feet, the greater part of this being concentrated in 

 three falls, known as the upper, middle, and lower falls. Crossing 

 this gorge, immediately above the upper fall, is a bridge, from 

 which one can look down on the swirling waters of the river 232 

 feet below, just above where they take their plunge of about ninety 

 feet over the upper fall, which stretches itself diagonally across the 

 river in a somewhat curved line, its lower edge resting on the west- 

 erly bank. About 2,200 feet below the upper fall is the middle 

 fall, which is said to plunge 1 10 feet to the waters below. This 

 is by far the largest of the three falls and the most impressive. 

 It has worn itself a deep pit, in which the maddened waters eddy 

 and swirl, finally emerging, humbled and subdued, as a narrow 

 stream, which flows quietly for about a mile and a third, when 

 it again becomes troubled, and makes its final plunge over the 

 lower fall, which has a height of about sixty feet. Here we 

 find Table Rock, a plateau some 800 feet long and about 150 

 feet wide, almost truncate at its lower end, over which, in times 

 gone by, the river leaped to the waters sixty or seventy feet below. 

 To the right of this Table Rock, as you look down stream, the 

 Genesee rushes madly through a narrow and deep channel it has 

 cut for itself in comparatively recent times. The southerly side of 



C^: [No. 10, Vol. 7, of ToRREYA, comprising pages 193-208, was issued October 18, 



-~ 1907.] 



C 209 



