Great Lakes
Great Lakes names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below. 1 of them is described by more than one encyclopedia.
Great Lakes Fisheries of
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
Fisheries of. The following statistics are taken from a preliminary report of the census bureau for the year ending December 31, 1908: Number. Value. Independent fishermen 4,402 Wage-earning fishermen 4,131 Vessels. . . . . 319 $858,669 Outfit (bait, fuel, provisions, etc.) 175,428 Boats. . . . . 3,956 617,042 Apparatus of capture, total 1,830,840 Fyke and hoop nets. . . . . 4,685 120,280 Gill nets. . . . . 146,991 959,110 Lines 22,830 Pots, crawfish. . . . . 13,290 3,290 Pound nets. . . . . 5,435 684,810 Seines. . . . . 656 33,910 Trammel nets. . . . . 530 2,350 Miscellaneous 4,260 Shore & accessory property 1,074,980 Cash capital 257,080 Pounds Value. Products, total $3,767,370 Black bass. . . . . 44,700 6,050 Brook trout. . . . . 18,000 6,280 Carp, German. . . . . 10,152,100 194,260 Catfish and bullheads. . . . . 962,500 49,900 Chub or kieye. . . . . 489,900 22,660 Drum. . . . . 1,489,800 15,550 Herring. . . . . 40,627,900 966,100 Ling or lawyer. . . . . 228,200 2,770 Perch, yellow. . . . . 6,930,100 208,370 Pike and pickerel. . . . . 2,141,800 136,070 Pike perch. . . . . 15,114,900 568,860 Sturgeon, inc. caviar. . . . . 271,100 44,070 Suckers or mullet. . . . . 7,257,500 166,980 Trout. . . . . 12,027,100 800,100 White bass. . . . . 224,100 10,790 Whitefish. . . . . 7,724,500 524,650 Frogs. . . . . 17,000 3,050 Crawfish. . . . . 348,100 13,930 Mink & muskrat skins. . . . . 45,500 14,790 Miscellaneous fish, etc 12,140 These statistics are confined to the fishing industry and do not include wholesale fish dealers or canneries.
Great Lakes the chain of lakes along the border between the eastern United States and Canada
Described by 2 of the 6 encyclopedias.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
the chain of lakes along the border between the eastern United States and Canada. They contain over 5,000 cubic miles of water; they have a combined surface area of 86,000 square miles; and constitute the greatest body of fresh water in the world. At one time, during the existence of a huge ice sheet, a glacier filled the present gorge of the St. Lawrence and dammed back the water. The Great Lakes then formed one sheet of water, a vast inland lake, the borders of which may be traced in the United States and Canada. The waters were discharged by way of the Mohawk Valley and the Hudson. The old outlet started near Rome, New York , on the southern shore of Lake Ontario. The present shore line is about 4,000 miles in length. The total water-shed comprises about 260,000 square miles. The depressions in which the lakes lie were caused by a settling of the earth's crust it is thought, due to the weight of glacial ice. By treaty agreement neither the Dominion of Canada nor the United States may maintain war vessels on the Great Lakes, nor erect fortifications on the shores. By permission of Canada the United States now maintains fifteen vessels as training ships on the Lakes. These ships carry six hundred men and seventy guns. See Superior ; Ontario ; Michigan ; Huron ; Erie ; Sault Ste. Marie; Niagara , etc.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the name given to that chain of lakes lying on the N. borders of the United States; they include Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 fishery table records over 40 million pounds of herring (cisco) and 12 million pounds of lake trout taken in a single year; both fisheries collapsed in the mid-20th century after sea lampreys reached the upper lakes through the Welland Canal, and the blue pike of Lake Erie was declared extinct in the 1980s. Zebra mussels arrived in ballast water in the late 1980s and quagga mussels soon after, remaking the lakes' food web, while the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 brought ocean shipping inland. Lake Erie's pollution became a national scandal in the 1960s and prompted the Canada-U.S. Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement of 1972. The Rush-Bagot arms limitation Aiton's mentions does still stand, but the modern figures are larger than the 1910 ones: about 94,000 square miles of surface and roughly 5,400 cubic miles of water, and geologists now attribute the basins mainly to glacial scouring of older river valleys rather than to the crust settling under the ice.
Written for this edition, 2026.