r26 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



than in the lake belt, though this western district bears no com- 

 parison with the eastern in ruggednees. These differences are 

 most emphasized where the belt is widest, that ie, in southern 

 Franklin county. The writer is not sufficiently familiar with the 

 belt in Hamilton county to know whether they are recognizable 

 there or not, but there can be no question of their prominence in 

 Franklin. 



While this belt is depressed below the general level of the 

 country on each side, no cause for its existence can be discovered 

 in the character of its underlying rocks. The lake belt is not a 

 belt of softer, or less resistant rocks, but is constituted of pre- 

 cisely the same rocks as the adjoining belts. Throughout a large 

 part of it the surface rock is anorthosite, the most resistant of 

 the Adirondack rocks. Augite syenite is the next rock in abund- 

 ance as it is in resistance. The rocks of the lake belt are in no 

 sense weaker than in the belts of higher altitude and greater 

 relief adjoining. 



The belt has many features which indicate that it was the path 

 of a considerable preglacial drainage system. The allnement of 

 Long lake, the Kaquette river from Long lake to Axton, and 

 Upper Saranac lake strongly suggests some such drainage val- 

 ley. Along the river and Upper Saranac lake the low rock 

 ridges trend east and west, at right angles to the main valley. 

 The rocky points which project into the lake and the narrow 

 bays which run in between them are precisely like inter- 

 stream spurs and drowned tributary valleys, and many of 

 the outlying ponds fall into alinement with the bays. Upper 

 Saranac lake occupies a preglacial valley, dammed at its south 

 end by a moraine and at the north by heavy sand deposits, 

 which largely cover and hide a moraine there, so that the 

 present outlet is at the side through one of the old tribu- 

 tary valleys. Lower Saranac lake occupies another such 

 valley with a morainic dam at its northern end, apparently 

 the same moraine by which Lake Placid is held up. Whether 

 the basin of either of these lakes was deepened by glacial action 

 or not can not be stated, but clearly such deepening is but trivial 



