Lake Adirondack. — Taylor. 395 
at least 2700 feet.* In making his statement Prof. Spencer re- 
ferred to other similar high level terraces farther west, meaning 
apparently the terraces which we had seen in the Adirondacks. 
Having been with Prof. Spencer when he made the Adirondack 
observations I desire to say that in my opinion nothing we 
saw there could bear the interpretation which he has given. 
Not the slightest evidence of wave action was seen — nothing 
that might not have been made in lakes of small or moderate 
size ponded by the ice sheet. Nothing was seen that is not 
better and more easily explained in that way than by the sup- 
position of high marine submergence. Furthermore, the ob- 
servations which I made on the northern slope after the joint 
excursion, occupying over three Aveeks of the fine autumn of 
that year, enable me to say with some confidence that there is 
no evidence of wide-spread high level submergence on that 
slope. 
If lake Adirondack was a glacial lake as supposed, then 
some other interesting conclusions follow. It is a common as- 
sumption with some writers on glacial subjects that the Adir- 
ondacks continued to be an important center of glacial 
growth and dispersion for a considerable time after the front 
of the main ice-sheet had withdrawn from the Ontario basin 
entirely, and partl}^ or entirely from the Champlain basin. 
Those who favor the idea of so-called "sedentary" ice-sheets 
are particularly inclined to this view. But if lake Adiron- 
dack existed as supposed, then its very existence is in con- 
flict with such an idea. No doubt there were some more or 
less important local glaciers among the high peaks of the 
Adirondacks after the main sheet had uncovered the south, 
east and west flanks of the mountain mass, but they did not 
deploy far on the peneplain below and certainly did not con- 
stitute anything that could properly be called a local ice-cap 
like that which Prof. Chamberlin describes as covering the 
Redclifl^ peninsula of Greenland. This conclusion is further 
strengthened b}^ the observ^ations of Prof. C. H. Hitchcock, 
who recently ascended to within a hundred feet or so of the 
top of Whiteface mountain (4871 feet altitude) and found its 
* The writer was not present at SpVingfteld. and has {jathorod the 
main points of Prof. Spencer's communication from two abstract*!. 
Proc. A. A. A. S., vol. xliv, p. 139. Also Am. Geol. for October, 1895. 
p. 249-50. 
