Lake
Lake names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Lake a body of water surrounded by land
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a body of water surrounded by land. Lakes are classified, according to the kind of water they contain, into freshwater, salt, alkaline, brackish, etc. Salt lakes are of two kinds. Some were formerly fresh and have become salt because they have no outlet. As the water evaporates, it leaves behind salt and other minerals absorbed from the soil. Great Salt Lake and the Dead Sea are of this nature. Other salt lakes are simply portions of the ocean imprisoned by the sinking of the basin in which they lie, or by the rising of a ridge cutting them off from the ocean. The Aral and the Caspian Seas were once a part of the Mediterranean. Fresh-water lakes are formed in various ways. The lakes of Switzerland lie in glacial valleys. Glacial deposits hold the water back just as a dam creates a pond. The waters of Lake Pepin, a widening of the Mississippi River, are held back by a ridge of silt brought in from Wisconsin by the Chippewa. Many lakes occupy hollows scooped out by former glaciers. The Great Lakes of North America are examples of this sort. Crater Lake, in the Cascades of Oregon, occupies the crater of an extinct volcano. Its surface is 8,000 feet above sea level. It is ten miles in circumference. It is the deepest body of fresh water in America. An underlying stratum of rock salt or other soluble mineral is sometimes dissolved by water and carried away, causing the surface to fall in, thus creating a sink lake. Such lakes are not infrequent in limestone countries. A river has a tendency to wear away the outer shore of a bend. In alluvial soil, therefore, the channel is likely to become a series of wide bends or loops. When a loop becomes pronounced, the current has a tendency to cut across the neck, thus straightening its course. The loop thus abandoned may be filled, in part, with silt, and be converted into a crooked or ox-bow lake. There are many such in the lower valley of the Mississippi. Most of the lakes of northern North America lie in low places caused by the uneven distribution of glacial drift. This is the case with nearly all prairie lakes. Nature is busy at work filling up and destroying her lakes. The growth and accumulation of vegetable matter and the dust blown in by the winds are rapidly converting shallow lakes into marshes and marshes into meadows. Tributaries bring in quantities of silt. The Rhone has filled in the upper part of Lake Geneva in this way. The delta has advanced into the lake two miles within historical times. The outlet of a lake has a tendency also to cut away its barrier, thus lowering its surface. So pronounced is the effect of tributaries and outlets, that geographers say "streams are the mortal enemies of lakes." The following are the larger lakes of the world. The area is expressed in square miles. The elevation is the altitude of the surface in feet above sea level. The minus sign indicates that the surface is below sea level. The depth is also expressed in feet. Greatest Area. Elevation. Depth. Aral Sea. . . . . 26,900 160 225 Baikal. . . . . 12,500 1,312 4,550 Caspian. . . . . 169,000 -85 2,400 Dead Sea. . . . . 370 -1,310 1,330 Erie. . . . . 9,990 573 210 Great Bear Lake . . . . . 11,200 200 Great Salt Lake. . . . . 2,000 4,218 50 Great Slave Lake. . . . . 10,100 650 Huron. . . . . 22,322 582 750 Ladoga. . . . . 7,000 60 730 Manitoba. . . . . 1,850 810 Michigan. . . . . 21,729 582 870 Nicaragua. . . . . 3,600 110 83 Nyassa. . . . . 14,000 1,500 600 Ontario. . . . . 7,104 247 738 Superior. . . . . 30,829 602 1,008 Tanganyika. . . . . 12,650 2,800 2,100 Titicaca. . . . . 3,300 12,875 700 Victoria Nyanza. . . . . 30,000. . . . . 4,000 590+ Winnipeg. . . . . 9,400 710 70
Lake a large sheet or expanse of expanse water entirely surrounded by land
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a large sheet or expanse of expanse water entirely surrounded by land, and having no by land, a direct or immediate communication ate comma with any sea, ocean, or river, or or river, having communication only by means of rivers. The largest fresh-water lake on water lako the globe is Lake Superior, in North America or, in Nor . It is 400 miles long, 160 miles wide at ng. 160 mil its greatest breadth, and has an area of 32,000 square miles.
Lake in the dyer's art
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
in the dyer's art, a pigment prepared usually by combining alum with a vegetable or animal dye. Alum is combined with cochineal to produce carmine lake; with logwood to produce purple; with madder to produce red; and with cobalt or indigo to produce blue. Lakes are used largely in printing calicoes and wall paper.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The physical descriptions of how lakes form still hold, but Aiton's 1910 table has been overtaken by events and better measurement. The Aral Sea, listed at 26,900 square miles, began shrinking in the 1960s when Soviet irrigation diverted its feeder rivers; by the 2010s the eastern basin had dried to salt desert and what remains is a few disconnected remnants. Baikal, given as 4,550 feet deep, is now measured at about 5,387 feet and recognised as the deepest lake on earth, while Crater Lake sits near 6,178 feet above the sea rather than 8,000 and fills the caldera left when Mount Mazama collapsed roughly 7,700 years ago. The dyer's "lake" of the second entry survives as a term for pigments precipitated onto a substrate, though synthetic organic dyes have largely displaced madder, logwood and cochineal.
Written for this edition, 2026.