Niagara Falls 



1898 confirmed by Dr. Julius Pohlman 1 who found that the Niagara 

 pencer channel was not sufficiently deep for the drainage of the buried 



valleys in the vicinity of Buffalo. 



In the same paper the valley-like features beneath the lake 

 waters were analyzed and established. But at that time the 

 course of the ancient drainage could not be traced beyond the 

 meridian of Oswego. The writer also objected to the theory 

 of the glacial excavation of the basins on account of the stream- 

 like sculpturing of the land and the sub-lacustrine escarpments; 

 and on account of the glaciation of the region being every- 

 where at sharp angles to the escarpments, whether above or 

 below the surface of the lakes. These views and the discov- 

 ery of the outlet for the ancient Erie Basin confirmed the 

 teachings of Prof. J. P. Lesley, who, from being a progenitor of 

 the science of topography, became the father of geomorphy, 

 of which the lake history is one of the phases. In speaking of 

 the origin of the lake valleys, Prof. Lesley 2 says : " For a 

 number of years I have been urging upon geologists, especially 

 those addicted to the glacial hypothesis of erosion, the strict 

 analogy existing between the submerged valleys of Lakes 

 Michigan, Huron and Erie and the whole series of dry Appal- 

 achian ' valleys of VIII,' stretching from the Hudson River 

 to Alabama; also of Green Bay, Lake Ontario and Lake 

 Champlain, with all the ' valleys of II and III.' One single 

 law of topography governs the erosion of them all, without 

 exception, whether at present traversed by small streams or 

 great rivers, or occupied by sheets of water, the only agency or 

 method of erosion common to them all being that of rainwater, 

 not in the form of a great river, because many of them neither 

 are nor ever have been great waterways." 



Notwithstanding the shortcomings and what are now known 

 to be errors of detail, the paper on the preglacial outlet of Erie 



1 The Life-history of Niagara. Pohlman. Trans. Am. Inst. Min. 

 Eng. 



2 Rept. Q. Geol. Sur. Pa., 1881, pp. 399-406. 



612 



