EXTINCTION OP ITHACA LAKE 49 



houses of Mrs Tallin ad ge and INIrs Sawyer. To the west the ridge ends 

 as a spit, facing lower ground. The elevation of this bar is 834 feet. 

 The frontal ridge forming the northern branch is 829 feet. 



ITHACA LAKE EXTINCTION 



Ovid village lies on the north point of the high ground separating 

 Cayuga and Seneca valleys. This is the critical point in the relation of 

 the glacial waters of the two valleys. We find here a set of phenomena 

 and a succession of events in the lacustrine history similar to those de- 

 scribed above referring to the extinction of lake Newberry. We are, 

 however, taking the general events in reversed order of time, as the Ovid 

 phenomena, to be described, refer to a time anterior, possibly by many 

 centuries, to that of the scourways near Canandaigua. The Ovid phe- 

 nomena relate to the origin of lake Newberry ; those near Canandaigua 

 to its extinction. 



South of the village the north-and-south drumlin ridging is broken 

 and east-and-west channels appear. The highest and broadest is about 

 one and one-half miles south and the lowest seems to be in the village. 

 The elevations have not been measured nor a close examination made 

 of these channels, but it is confidently believed that they are the scour- 

 ways eroded by the escaping waters of the Ithaca lake. While the ice- 

 sheet covered this nortliern end of the dividing ridge between the Cayuga 

 and Seneca valleys the waters of the Cayuga valley (Ithaca lake) were 

 held up to a level of the White Church outlet, southeast of Ithaca, Avith 

 present elevation of 975 feet. When the ice melted back from the ground 

 soutli of Ovid the Ithaca waters found there an outlet about 60 feet 

 lower and made haste to escape westward along the ice-front into the 

 Watkins lake. When this subsidence was accomplished and the waters 

 of the two valleys became confluent, then lake Newberry, the expansion 

 of the local Watkins lake, occupied the Cayuga valley. 



OwAsco Valley 



The present Owasco lake is eleven miles long, with elevation of 710 feet. 

 The cit}' of Auburn lies two miles beyond the north end of the lake and 

 Some distance beyond the end of the definite valley. The valle}' bottom 

 extends seven miles south of the lake, to the village of Locke, and then 

 rises for eleven miles to Freeville, where the valley is intersected by an 

 east-and-west depression, drained by Fall creek westward into Cayuga 

 lake. 



At Locke a narrow valley branches sonthwest from the main valley 

 and heads in a swamp col near north Lansing. Be.yond the col is the 



