THE CAYUGA FLORA. vii 



The central topographical feature is Cayuga Lake ; arid, indeed, by 

 reference to the map it will be seen to be the central feature of the 

 whole lake-system of Central New York. The neighboring lakes are 

 all at a higher level, and pour their waters, either into the vast level 

 marshes which are manifestly but a northern continuation of the 

 great Cayuga valley, or into Cayuga Lake itself. Seneca, Owasco 

 and the other lakes usually possess a well-defined northern shore, but 

 the Cayuga Marshes, raised but little above the level of our lake, so 

 blend into its shallows that its exact northern termination is difficult 

 to define ; and they give to it, — at least to that portion of it — a char- 

 acter entirely its own, which was recognized by the "Six Natious," 

 or ancient Kanonsionni, who called what we now know as Cayuga 

 Lake, " Tiohero," 1 the lake of flags or rushes, or lake of the marsh. 2 

 The limit of the Flora is therefore extended down these marshes to 

 Montezuma. The length of the lake is usually estimated at 38 miles, 

 its breadth from 1 % to 3 miles. In appearance therefore it resembles 

 a great river ; indeed it is said to occupy a part of a preglacial river 

 channel of which the Neguaena valley was the continuation. The 

 height of the lake above mean tide is' 383 feet, 3 the greatest depth 

 found by numerous soundings of the Cornell University Engineering 

 Department was 435 feet, at a point directly off Kidder's Ferry. 

 In the section between Myers Point and Sheldrake Point it is 

 in many places over 400 feet deep. On account 'of its depths its 

 waters are comparatively cold far into the summer, and rarely 

 become so chilled in winter as to admit of the formation of ice 

 over the deeper sections. From one-half to two-thirds of the middle 

 section usually remains open, but in the winter of 1884-5 the lake was 

 frozen over before the middle of February and the ice did not break 

 up till the first week in April. There is a tradition that this occurs 

 about once in twenty years. The temperature of the lake unquestion- 

 ably influences the development of vegetation in its immediate vicin- 

 ity. Plants on its shores are usually a week later in the Spring than 

 in the neighboring ravines and the warm valley about Ithaca, and a 

 week earlier than on the distant highest hills ; and during the first 

 half of November, the blue flowers of Aster Icevis and the white 

 plumes of Aster sagithfolius still remain in considerable abundance, 

 while they have long ago matured and faded near Ithaca. The ex- 

 tremes of the natural climate are in this manner so modified that the 

 eastern slopes of Cayuga and the other lakes have always grown the 



1 See Relations des festiites, for the year 1672, Quebec Ed., Ill, p. 

 22 ; also the map in the same volume. 



2 See Notes of Gen'l J. S. Clark, in the Journal of Lieut. Harden- 

 bergh, p. 71.. The name is variously written Thiohero, Tichero, 

 Choharo. At the time of the establishment of the Jesuit mission in 

 1656, at the foot of the lake, and for a century after, the name was also 

 applied to one of the three principal towns of the Cayuga tribe of the 

 great League, viz. : that on the eastern side of the Ca}'uga Marshes 

 near where the turnpike crosses the outlet at present. Apparently 

 the same word with same meaning — written Deyohero — is in the Can- 

 ienga or Mohawk dialect. See Hale's explanation in his Iroquois 

 Book of Rites, 1883, p. 121. 



3 See Survey of the Geneva, Ithaca and Sayre R. R. 



