Mr. A. T. Drummond recently wrote a letter to Nature, in which he said he believed he had solved the mystery of the invisible inflow, which cannot possibly be attributed to springs from any higher ground in the neighborhood. In his opinion the source of the lake is to be found in the Trenton limestone area some twenty-five or thirty miles to the northeast. There is a steady rise in these rocks to the north and their dip is favorable to sending the water that sinks through the soil to them southward to the region of Lake Ontario. Fifty miles away the rocks have a height of 400 feet above the lake.
In order to ascertain the bearing of these rocks upon the origin of the inflow, Mr. Drummond last summer made a series of soundings in the little lake. The largest part of the lake is shallow, but along its southern edge he found a great rent in the bottom nearly a mile long and a third of a mile wide. In this rent the depths varied from seventy-five to 100 feet. He says the rent is probably due to a wide fault or breakage in the Trenton limestone, and he believes that the same forces that gave rise to this fault may account for a subterranean connection with the higher ground many miles to the north through which the water finds its way into the little lake that overlooks Ontario. Mr. Drummond’s theory is the most plausible that has yet been suggested to account for the source from which this mysterious lake receives its waters.
A BOILING LAKE.
There is a lake of boiling water in the Island of Dominica, lying in the mountains behind Roseau, and in the valleys surrounding it are many solfataras, or volcanic sulphur vents. In fact, the boiling lake is little better than a crater filled with scalding water, constantly fed by mountain streams, and through which the pent-up gases find vent and are ejected. The temperature of the water on the margins of the lake ranges from 180° to 190° Fahrenheit; in the middle, exactly over the gas vents, it is believed to be about 300°. Where this active action takes place the water is said to rise two, three, or even four feet above the general surface level of the lake, the cone often dividing so that the orifices through which the gas escapes are legion in number. This violent disturbance over the gas jets causes a violent action over the whole surface of the lake, and, though the cones appear to be special vents, the sulphurous vapors rise with equal density over its entire surface. Contrary to what one would naturally suppose, there seems to be in no case violent action of the escaping gases, such as explosions or detonations. The water is of dark gray color, and having been boiled over and over for thousands of years, has become thick and slimy with sulphur. As the inlets to the lake are rapidly closing, it is believed that it will soon assume the character of a geyser or sulphurous crater.—St. Louis Republic.
AN UNCANNY LAKE.
There is in Missouri a lake, perched on the top of a mountain, its surface from 50 to 100 feet below the level of the earth surrounding it, fed by no surface streams, untouched by the wind, dead as the sea of Sodom. There is no point of equal altitude from which water could flow within hundreds of miles, and yet it has a periodical rise of 30 feet or over, which is in no way affected by the atmospheric conditions in the country adjacent. It may rain for weeks in Webster County, and the return of fair weather will find Devil’s Lake at its lowest point, while it may reach its highest point during a protracted drouth.—St. Louis Globe-Democrat.