Todd : Birds of Erie and Presque Isle. 485 



a rolling character, culminating in a drainage divide averaging two 

 hundred feet higher yet. From these highlands numerous small 

 and a few larger streams, such as Elk, Walnut, and Mill Creeks, 

 descend to Lake Erie, breaking through the intervening hills and the 

 terrace formation in the lower portion of their courses, in a series of 

 deep gorges or gullies, which are one of the most striking topo- 

 graphical features of this section. Mill Creek empties into Presque 

 Isle Bay at Erie, and is utilized as one of the outlets of the sewage of 

 the city. The marshes and mud-flats at its mouth constitute one of the 

 best feeding-grounds in this whole region for many kinds of shore- 

 birds and aquatic fowl during the season of migration. Being so near 

 the docks and railroad yards, however, it is far from being a safe 

 haven for the birds, and large numbers are often killed here by 

 gunners ; but if shooting were forbidden on these few acres it is prob- 

 able that here, during the fall migration, more varieties of shore-birds 

 could be seen than at any other one point in Pennsylvania. 



The Peninsula has a roughly semicircular outline, about seven miles 

 long in arc (measured on the outside) and five and one-half miles in 

 chord. Near its western extremity and junction with the mainland 

 (about two and one-half miles west of the city limits) — known locally 

 as the "Head" — it is quite narrow, in some places an interval of 

 less than one hundred yards separating the waters of the lake and bay. 

 To the east, however, it gradually widens until it attains a breadth of 

 one and one-fourth miles from shore to shore. An arm of Erie Bay, 

 known as Misery Bay, occupies a rounded indentation just east of the 

 widest part, the land curving around its eastern shore for some dis- 

 tance to the southward, terminating abruptly in an artificial pier along 

 the channel leading from the lake, where are ranged the buildings 

 belonging to the United States Lighthouse and Life-saving Station. 

 The entire Peninsula is the property of the General Government, and 

 the only other buildings upon it are those in connection with the light- 

 house on its north shore, known locally as the " flash-light," but offi- 

 cially as " Presque Isle Light." 



In a geological sense the Peninsula is merely an immense sand-bar, 

 the manner of the formation of which may easily be traced, as all the 

 various stages are represented. The action of the wind and waves has 

 at intervals raised a bar parallel to the shore-line, with which, in course 

 of time, it has become united at one or both ends, enclosing a pond, 

 whose margins have gradually grown more and more marshy as the 



