80 The Lake as a Microcosm. 
we worked, and will then do what I can (with much difficulty and perplexity 
no doubt, and I fear with no very brilliant success), to furnish you the ma- 
terials for a picture of the life that swims, and creeps, and crawls and bur- 
rows and climbs through the water, in and on the bottom and among the 
feathery water plants with which large areas of these lakes are filled. 
Fox Lake in the western border of Lake county, lies in the form of a broad 
irregular crescent, truncate at the ends, and with the concavity of the crescent 
to the northwest. The northern end is broadest and communicates with Petite 
Lake. Two points projecting inward from the southern shore form three 
broad bays. The western end opens into Nippisink lake, Crab Island separat- 
ing the two. Fox river enters the lake from the north just eastward of this 
island, and flows directly through the Nippisink. The length of a curved 
line extending through the central part of this lake, from end to end, is very 
nearly three miles, and the width of the widest part is about a mile and a 
quarter. The shores are bold, broken and wooded, except to the north, where 
they are marshy and flat. All the northern and eastern part of the lake was 
visibly shallow,— covered with weeds and feeding water-fowl—and I made no 
soundings there. The water was probably nowhere more than two fathoms in 
depth, and over most of that area was doubtless under one and a half.» In the 
western part, five lines of soundings were run, four of them radiating from 
Lippincott’s Point, and the fifth crossing three of these nearly at right angles. 
The deepest water was found in the middle of the mouth of the western bay, 
where a small area of five fathoms occurs. On the line running northeast from 
the point, not more than one and three-fourths fathoms was found. The bot- 
tom at a short distance from the shores was everywhere a soft, deep mud. 
Four hauls of the dredge were made in the western bay, and the towing net 
was dragged about a mile. 
Long Lake differs from this especially in its isolation, and its smaller size. 
It is about a mile and a half in length by half.a mile in breadth. Its banks 
are all bold except at the western end, where a marshy valley traversed by a 
small creek, connects it with Fox Lake, at a distance of about two miles. The 
deepest sounding made was six and a half fathoms, while the average depth 
of the deepest part of the bed was about five fathoms. 
Cedar Lake, upon which we spent a fortnight, is a pretty sheet of water, the. 
head of a chain of six which open finally into the Fox. It is about a mile in 
greatest diameter in each direction, with a small but charming island bank 
near the center, covered with bushes and vines—a favorite home of birds and 
wild flowers. The shores vary from rolling to bluffy, except for a narrow strip 
of marsh through which the outlet passes, and the bottoms and margins are 
gravel, sand and mud in different parts of its area. Much of the lake is shallow 
and full of water plants; but the northern part reaches a depth of fifty feet, a 
short distance from the eastern bluff. 
Deep Lake the second of this chain, is of similar character, with a greatest 
depth of fifty-seven feet,—the deepest sounding we made in these smaller lakes 
of Illinois. In these two lakes several temperatures were taken with a differen- 
tial thermometer. In Deep Lake, for example, at fifty-seven feet I found the 
bottom temperature 5383°—about that of ordinary well water—when the air 
was 63°; and in Cedar Lake, at forty-eight feet, the bottom was 58° when the 
air was 61°. 
Geneva Lake, Wisconsin, isa clear and beautiful body of water, about eight 
miles long by one and a quarter in greatest width. The banks are all high, 
rolling, and wooded, except at the eastern end, where its outlet rises. Its 
deepest water is found in its western third, where it reaches a depth of twenty- 
three fathoms. I made here early in November, twelve hauls of the dredge 
and three of the trawl, aggregating about three miles in length, so distributed 
in distance and depth as to give a good idea of the invertebrate life of the lake 
at that season. 
_ 
