=Glacial Lakes in New York.=--A glacial lake is defined by H. P. Fairchild, in his paper on Glacial Waters in the Finger Lake Region of New York (Geological Society of America, Rochester, N. Y.), as a body of static water existing by virtue of a barrier of ice. Such impounded waters may exist where a glacier blocks a stream, or where the general land surface inclines toward the glacier foot. The lakes described in Mr. Fairchild’s paper belongs to the second class, and were formed in the southern part of the Ontario basin, where the land slopes northward from a plateau of two thousand feet elevation down to Lake Ontario, two hundred and forty-six feet. The high plateau was deeply gashed by the preglacial stream erosion, and in these trenches along the northern border of the plateau lie the present “Finger Lakes.” The topography was peculiarly favorable to the production against the bold ice front of a series of distinct valley lakes, in many respects unequaled elsewhere. Between twenty and thirty of these lakes are described in Professor Fairchild’s paper, which occupied sites now partly represented by nineteen streams and lakes, beginning with Tonawanda Creek on the west and extending to Butternut Creek (Jamesburg and Apulia) on the east. The local lakes were not of long duration, and their surface level was unstable, changing with the down-cutting of the outlets and with the greatly increased volume of the summer melting of the ice sheet. Consequently, true beaches are usually wanting. The conspicuous evidences are the deltas of land streams, with their terraces, embankments, bars and spits, and the outlet channels. The records of these extinct waters are the very latest phenomena connected with the ice invasion, and are the connecting link between the glacial condition and the present hydrography. They are of lively interest, perhaps, to only a few persons, but the details are necessary to the more general study of the Pleistocene. No economic or practical result from the knowledge is foreseen, “but as pure science the study of these waterless lakes, waveless shores, and streamless channels has a fascination and romance.” * * * * *