January 27, 1888.] 



SCIENCE. 



49 



voice in the matter of the local nomenclature ? Suppose that they, 

 for the sake of euphony, should say that ' Worcester ' (Mass.) 

 should be pronounced ' Wor-ces-ter,' or 'Tehuacana' (Tex.) 

 ' Tee-hu-a-can-a,' or ' San Jose ' (Cal.) ' Saint Jo,' etc. : they would 

 be termed ridiculous. If Anglo-Americans should agree to aban- 

 don the original pronunciation of all the French and Spanish 

 spelled geographic terms of the South-west, I would agree with 

 Mr. Dorsey, " that, when the regular Indian pronunciation cannot 

 be maintained, let us use one that is euphonic English ; " but as 

 long as we pronounce the final syllable of the following partial 

 list of French-American denominatives ' a ' or ' aw,' all of which 

 had the same origin and belong to the same category as ' Arkan- 

 sas,' I shall oppose the singling-out of the latter word for euphonic 

 experimentation : Attakapas, Tensas, Arkansas, Opelousas, Qua- 

 paw' (Kapas), Chickasaw ' (Chickachas, Tchicachas). 



Now, let us drop the word ' Arkansas ' for the present, and take 

 a look into the pronunciation of the geographic nomenclature of the 

 western United States, which had its origin in the romance-speak- 

 ing people, and its modifications by the Anglo-Saxon migrants, and 

 lexicographers. Mr. Swinburne has given some fine illustrations 

 of. this in his able article ' The Bucolic Dialect of the Plains,' in a 

 recent number of Scribner's Magazine ; but there some general 

 laws can be drawn from my observations in the Upper and Lower 

 Mississippi valley, which I think are worthy of consideration. They 

 are as follows : — 



(1) In the north-west, the Latin-American geographic names, or 

 Indian names spelled in the Latin languages, are generally spelled 

 correctly by Anglo-Americans, but often mispronounced. Ex- 

 amples : ' Terre Haute,' 'Detroit,' 'Versailles,' 'Kansas,' 'Vin- 

 cennes,' etc. 



(2) Latin-American names of the south-west, or Indian names 

 spelled in Latin languages, are often wrongly spelled by Anglo- 

 Americans, but usually pronounced with approximate correctness. 

 Examples; 'Bosque' ('Basque'), 'Turn Wall' (rare) ('Terre 

 Noir'), 'Low Freight' (' L'Eau Frais '), 'Boggy' ('Bogie,' proper 

 name), ' Tensaw ' (' Tensas '), ' Prairie Dan ' (' Prairie d' Ane '), 

 ' Arkansaw,* 'Waco' ('Hueco'), etc. 



It seems indeed paradoxical that the best educated and most 

 literate population should have been least correct in the pronun- 

 ciation ; but when it is remembered that the Southern migrants 

 procured their pronunciation by direct contact with the French and 

 Spanish speaking people, and that the Websterian pronunciation 

 was invented far from the scene, and in a day when modern lan- 

 guages received little attention, and the monopolizing classics pro- 

 nounced even the mother Latin in the euphonious veni, vidi, vici, 

 method, it was nothing but natural, that, " while Noah Webster in 

 Connecticut was proposing single-handed to work over the English 

 tongue so as to render it suitable to the wants of a self-complacent 

 young nation," he should have fallen into the error of writing in the 

 former editions of his valuable dictionary, " Arkansas, formerly 

 pronounced and sometimes written ' Arkansaw.' " 



It is gratifying to note, that, with the increased facilities for travel 

 of late years, these erroneous arbitrary pronunciations are wearing 

 away, and that Webster's latest edition gives the pronunciation 

 ' Ar-kan-sa.' Rob't T. Hill. 



U.S. GeoL Surv., Jan. 17. 



The Iroquois Beach. — A Chapter in the History of Lake 

 Ontario. 



I SEND you the following abstract of a paper read by me 

 before the Washington Philosophical Society, Jan. 7, 1888. 



Of the high-level beaches about Lake Ontario, the most impor- 

 tant is that to which the writer has given the name' Iroquois,' after 

 the Indian confederation who used portions of it as a trail. Frag- 

 ments of this beach have long been known, but these were first 

 correlated in New York by Mr. G. K. Gilbert, who discovered that 

 the variations in its height were due to the differential elevation of 

 the earth's crust. These investigations have been carried around the 

 Canadian side of the lake by the writer, whose studies upon the 

 origin of the Great Lakes date back for a decade. He has also 

 followed the beach beyond the observations of Mr. Gilbert, in north- 



^ The old French methods of spelling these words are given in parentheses. They 

 are instances of words wherein the orthography has been sacrificed, and the pronunci- 

 ation approximately maintained. 



eastern New York, across the axis of maximum northern uplift, 

 among the Laurentian ridges. In the old sea-cliffs in the region of 

 Black River the author has found evidence of still older and greater 

 differential elevation. At the head of the lake the height of the 

 beach is 363 feet, south-east of the lake 441 (Gilbert), north-east, 

 near Watertown, about 700, and at Trenton, Ont., 657 (barometric) 

 feet, above the sea, in place of 247 feet, — the elevation of the 

 modern lake. It is usually located within a few miles of the moderr» 

 shore. At the south-eastern margin this beach sweeps around and 

 includes Oneida Lake. North and east of Belleville, the lake, at 

 this epoch, covered a large region, stretching to the Ottawa and 

 down the St. Lawrence River. The maximum depth of the lake 

 was 1,000 feet, in place of 738 feet, as at present ; and of the out- 

 let, 800, in place of a maximum of 240. The characters of the 

 beach are described. Upon the northern side it re.sts upon drift- 

 hills, but these are often replaced by more or less rocky shores upon 

 the southern side. From Hamilton to Rochester, the eastward 

 equivalent of the upward warping is three-fourths of a foot per 

 mile, thence to Oneida Lake only one-fifth of a foot, and beyond a 

 downward movement is indicated. At the eastern end of the lake 

 the uplift increases from three feet to about five feet per mile, in 

 proceeding northward. About the western end of the lake the 

 northern equivalent of differential elevation ranges from 1.4 feet to 

 three or four feet about Georgian Bay. The foci of elevation are 

 south-east of James (Hudson) Bay. During the Iroquois epoch 

 the lake was less than 140 feet above tide, and may have been at 

 sea-level. In either case the outlet of the lake would have been 

 800 feet deep in places. There was no rock nor dirt barrier. Un- 

 til further investigation shows the necessity, no other barrier will 

 be assumed. In the Iroquois beach, remains of mammoths, elk, 

 and beaver have been found, but no shells are known. There are 

 lower beaches which are less perfectly developed, yet these show a 

 decline of the warping forces. The Iroquois beach is coincident 

 with the level of the Mohawk valley. Ontario was united with the 

 other Great Lakes at a common level (the altitude being much 

 lower than at the present day). This common lake (until the 

 separation of Ontario) is here named Lake Warren, in honor of 

 Gen. G. K. Warren, whom the writer regards as the father of 

 lacustrine geology in America. Lake Warren is posterior to the 

 last great ice epoch, and Ontario somewhat younger. Although 

 the Ontario basin was somewhat warped before the Iroquois epoch, 

 yet, so far, there is no evidence that the smaller basin formed an 

 earlier separate lake. 



In the study of the lakes the two great questions are, the origin 

 of the valleys, and the cause of their closing into water-basins. As 

 the valleys were shown long ago by the author to be preglacial, 

 the second question is now being solved by the labors of Mr. Gil- 

 bert and the writer. Much unpublished information has been 

 collected, and very much more is needed. There is now a dawn of 

 light upon the theory and origin of the Great Lakes of North 

 America. J. W. Spencer. 



Weather-Predictions. 



In addition to Mr. Clayton's letter on this subject in Science for 

 Jan. 13, I would state that I have never objected to a fair interpre- 

 tation of ' my rules ' so called, which, however, were an amplifica- 

 tion of his own. Long before the predictions closed, I wrote him, 

 suggesting that when one predicted ' rain,' the other ' threatening,' 

 and the weather was actually ' fair,' the prediction nearer the truth 

 should have the more weight. It is easy to see that the intent of 

 any rules could only be a fair comparison between predictions. As 

 I have already stated {Science, Dec. 30, p. 323), in two cases Mr. 

 Clayton came nearer the actual weather, and in eight mine were 

 the nearer. It was only after Mr. Clayton refused this proposition 

 and any reference to a third person that I referred the matter to an 

 impartial judge. 



I am very glad indeed to find Mr. Clayton insisting, that, when 

 predictions are made according to a certain rule, they should be 

 verified thereby. In the case before us I have gone over all of Mr. 

 Clayton's predictions in the Boston Transcript, and find, that, if 

 he had modified them otherwise, they would have received the same 

 verification by Upton's scheme as by mine, or, under the most lib- 



