1911] Fernald,— Expedition to Newfoundland 157 
3,000 to 5,000 feet, the attraction of the ice would lower the level 
of the equatorial sea by amounts ranging from five to eight fathoms.” 
Consequently, when the front of the northern ice-sheet extended 
along the coast of New England, the attraction of the ice would tend 
to some extent to compensate for the negative change of our sea-level 
produced by direct extraction of water from the ocean; but as the 
ice-front receded farther and farther to the north the belt of ice- 
attracted water would shift with it, and when New England, the Mari- 
time Provinces, and Newfoundland were quite free from the ice-sheet 
and the front of the latter had receded to a point on the Labrador 
Peninsula, the northward moving rim of heightened water would have 
passed beyond us and our coast-line would feel little positive effect 
from this source. 
If we now examine a chart showing the contours of the coastal 
bench which extends as a submerged fringe off the eastern coast of 
North America and which represents the old land-border of the 
continent, we shall see that in some places, for instance at Nantucket 
Shoals and Georges Shoal, the bench comes to within 2 or 3 fathoms 
of the ocean-surface, while 100 miles off Canso in eastern Nova Scotia, 
Sable Island rises above the water as a long sand-ridge fully 100 feet 
high. In many areas — the bench all the way from the coast of the 
South Atlantic States to Georges Bank, then Brown’s Bank, then the 
coastal banks around western and southern Nova Scotia, Sable Island 
Bank, the Banquereau, St. Pierre Bank, etc.— there are portions of 
the old land-border forming an almost continuous chain of submerged 
plains which, even 100 miles out to sea, show soundings of only 25 to 
44, often as low as 10 or 15, fathoms. If we trace the line of soundings 
which reveals the submerged coastal plain at a depth of 60 fathoms, we 
shall find that only the very deepest channels, such as the outlet from 
the deep Gulf of Maine (now 25 miles wide) between Georges Bank 
and Brown’s Bank, or Cabot Strait between Cape Breton and the 
Banquereau on the west and Newfoundland and St. Pierre Bank on 
the east, interrupt the continuity of the coastal bench. 
Now, if we concede the withdrawal of water from the ocean to 
form the ice of the Glacial Period and disregard for the moment the 
possibility of any other change in the level of the coast, it will be obvious 
that vast areas off our present shore must have their ocean-water 
withdrawn. If we take Penck’s view that “the sea-level must have 
been 150 meters [492 feet or 82 fathoms] below its present position” 
