Lake Ontario

The article from the Toronto Qlobe on the cause of the fall in Lake Ontario has created quite an animated controversy. The Ogdensburg Journal, says: "The Globe is wrong, if the excavation of the Galloups had a tendency to lower the water above that poiut it would increase it below, which is not the case, The water in Lake Ontario during the past hundred years, has been many times as low as it is now, and has at many times reacheü a point nearly four feet higher. This f act has given rise to the theory entertained by so many that there is seven years fall, and then a seven years rise, bringing the hign water periodsfourteenyear3 apart. The space between the lighthouse and Rome railwav denot in this city affords a guod point to note the cbange f rom one extreme to the other. At low water mark, foot passengere can walk over it dry shod, while at high wattr mark light barges can sail across. We have repeatedly seen the water lower than at present, and many times the dead level over three feet higher." TheSt. Catharines News says thoso who have lived many years on the shores of the lake remark that there are periods of an ebb and fiood tide, wlien the difference in depth, as staown by the water marks, is very great. Some thirty years ago, boys could wade f ully half a rnile from shore in some places. Bare rock and white, dry sand stretched away f rom the beach twentyand thirty yards, aud land that has been under water fornierly was easily and profitably cultivated. This state of affairs lasted for several years, with spring and fall variations. Subsequently a period of high water set in, when small boats could easily be navigated where grain had been grown a few years previously. Large fields bordering on the shore which had been cultivated, were submerged to the depth of three and four feet, and boys amused themselves spearing "mud cats" and suckers where they used to hoe potatoes and rake hay. Dr. Scadding, in "Toronto of Old," states that in 1815 the waters appear to have been unusually high, and in an alnianac of that year, "published by John Cameron at York," the phenomen is accounted for thus: "The cornet which passed to the northward three years ku has sensibly affected our seasons; they have become colder; the snows f all deeper; and f rom lesser exhalaüon and other causes, the lakes rise much higher than usual." The comets seem to have lost their powers, for if one cornet could in three years perform such mighty deeds, surely all the comets we have had in this great cornet year should have operated at once to raise the waters, instead of allowing them to recede.