44-4 European and American Lakes. 



It may seem strange that I should take the Lake 

 of Geneva as a special example, when the lakes of 

 Llanberis, Llyn-llydaw, and Bala in Wales, Windermere 

 in the Cumbrian region, Loch Doon in Ayrshire, Loch 

 Katrine, or Loch Lomond, and many other lakes in the 

 Highlands, would on a smaller scale do as well. But 

 though it was in Wales that the first idea of the theory 

 struck me, while mapping its moraines and ice-grooves 

 in 1854, yet it was only after a critical examination of 

 many of the lakes in and around the Alps, that in 1861 

 I ventured to assert that nearly all their basins were 

 scooped out by the great glaciers of the icy period. I 

 then first clearly saw its bearing as a veritable discovery 

 in physical geography, affecting not Switzerland and 

 Britain alone, but a large part of the habitable world. 



If we examine the maps of the northern hemisphere 

 generally, beginning at the equator, and going north^ 

 it is remarkable that, excepting lagoons, crater-lakes, 

 and a few formed by subsidence in volcanic areas, 

 we find very few important lakes in its southern regions, 

 and these chiefly in Central Africa, where no traveller 

 has yet tried to account for them. As we proceed 

 northwards in America, in latitudes 38 and 40, the 

 lakes on the eastern half of the continent begin to in- 

 crease, and soon become tolerably numerous. North of 

 New York, towards the St. Lawrence, they become so 

 numerous, that they appear on large maps to be 

 scattered over the country in every direction, and beyond 

 this to the west and north of Lake Superior and the 

 St. Lawrence, the whole country is, so to speak, sown 



Lakes,' &c. ' Jour. Geol. Soc.' 1862, vol. xviii. For the germ of the 

 whole subject see also ' The Old Glaciers of Switzerland and North 

 Wales,' ' Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers,' republished as a separate 

 book 1860. 



