174 E. C. QUEREAU—JAMESVILLE LAKE, NEW YORK. 
part of the state. They are of inconsiderable size—so small, in fact, that 
they often do not appear on the general maps of the state and must be 
looked for on the more detailed county maps or on the large-scale topo- 
graphic maps of the government survey. Some of them are designated 
as ‘‘ Green lake” or ‘“‘ Round lake ” on these maps, the same term apply- 
ing to several different water bodies. The lake near Jamesville which is 
the subject of this paper is not named on any of the maps which have 
come to my notice. At Jamesville and in the immediate vicinity of the 
lake it goes by the names “ Green pond,” “ Green lake,” and “ Jamesville 
lake,” indifferently, and I have chosen the name “ Jamesville lake,” as it 
helps to locate the lake and is the only one which distinguishes it from 
a number of other ‘‘ Green” ponds and lakes. It is only a few hundred 
feet in diameter and is situated about a mile west of Jamesville and be- 
tween five and six miles southeast of Syracuse. 
The origin and history of this lake have been made the subject of more 
or less thought and speculation on the part of early geological and other 
writers who have described this region. The deep pit, or crater-like de- 
pression which it occupies, the remarkable symmetry of the lake and of 
its steep enclosing walls, and the unusual beauty of the ensemble when 
seen from a point of vantage, are such as to make a strong impression 
on the mind of the casual traveler or on the scientific student of nature. 
The theories advanced by the early observers are for the most part crude 
and readily disproven. Probably the most plausible explanation is the 
one which seeks to account for the lake on the supposition that it occu- 
pies the floor of a large cave, the roof of which had been so near the sur- 
face that it had fallen in, leaving the bottom of the cave exposed to view. 
This view is to a considerable extent current at the present time, and 
will be referred to again. 
In December, 1896, Mr G. K. Gilbert, at a meeting of the Geological Soci- 
ety, called attention to the existence of a number of abandoned water chan- 
nels in the vicinity of Syracuse which havea general east-and-west direc- 
tion. These he believed to bethe paths by which the Erian waters were 
discharged eastward across the state during the time when the Ontario 
basin and the Niagara outlet were still blocked by ice. This statement, 
which came to me some time after I had begun my studies about James- 
ville, helped to solve two important difficulties which I had encountered, 
namely, that we have here large channels at right angles to the normal 
drainage of the country, and that at one time, as seemed to be clearly 
indicated, rivers of considerable size had occupied them. My studies 
led me to believe that the Jamesville lake basin and other similar de- 
pressions in the neighborhood should be associated in point of origin 
with these channels, as will be developed in the following discussion. 
