112 



The Canadian Field-Naturalist 



[Vol. XXXVI 



Another old sea beach deposit is reported to have 

 been passed through by a well in the town of 

 Curling located on the property of Mr. Baggs. 

 Seashells were found in digging the well, according 

 to Mr. Baggs, at a level of about 40' A.T. 



In connection with the observations recorded 

 above, Tyrrell's notes on the terraces of Bay St. 

 George, 45 miles southwest of Curling, and points 

 on the east coast of the Island are of interest. He 

 writes as follows:** 



". . . At Bay St. George, west of Stephen- 

 ville, west coast, the main terrace has an elevation 

 of 100 feet. At Fox Island River, north of Bay 

 St. George, there is a well defined gravel beach at 

 an elevation of 150 feet above the river. From 

 this gravel beach an even plain rises gently and 

 regularly to the foot of the mountains where it has 

 an elevation of 600 feet above the sea. The plain 

 is underlain by hard boulder clay and I could not 

 distinguish any definite gravel beach or shore on 

 the line which I travelled, but I would not say 

 that it does not exist. I am reasonably certain that 

 there is no shore line along the foot of the mountains 

 at the 600 foot elevation. 



On the west side of White Bay, east coast, there 

 was an excellent opportunity of seeing the old 

 shore lines on Sops Island where a depression 

 between two ridges of rock is filled with boulder 

 clay. On this Island there is a strong gravel 

 beach at 120 feet, and another at 160 feet, but 

 above that there is no sign whatever of a shore 

 line or of wave action of any kind, though there are 

 excellent places for preservation of a beach if any 

 had ever been formed. I am therefore satisfied 

 that the 160 foot beach is the highest post-glacial 

 shore line on Sops Island. 



On Sops River the glaciation was north-eastward 

 down the river from the Long Range Mountains. I 

 am not sure that there was not also a glaciation 

 northward down White Bay itself. 



In the vicinity of the City of St. John's, I did 

 not measure the height of the highest shore line, 

 but am satisfied that it is much nearer the 160 foot 

 level than the 575 foot level as given by Daly." 



It will be noted that none of the observations 

 quoted above show beaches at a greater elevation 

 than 160 feet. The higher figures in letter quoted 

 by Fairchild^ were estimates made evidently 

 without instrumental aids which will explain any 

 apparent discrepancies. The revision of Daly's 

 earher observations at St. John's^" by himself has 

 reduced the post-glacial emergence to zero.^^ 



The very large figure given by some early obser- 

 vers for the maximum emergence on the Labrador 

 coast have not been corroborated by the later 

 work on that coast. The surprisingly large figure 

 of 2000 feet reported by Bell^- for the highest beaches 

 at Nachvak Inlet in north-eastern Labrador has 

 not been verified by the later observations of Daly 

 and Coleman; the latter^'^ gives 430 feet as the 

 greatest elevation at which elevated beaches have 

 been observed on the Labrador coast. The beaches 

 reported by Hind up to 1200 feet in the interior of 

 Labrador are doubtless modified glacial moraines 

 as suggested by Packard.^* Hind relied much upon 

 the absence of boulders as a criterion of the amount 

 of emergence as the following quotation will show: 

 "The remarkable absence of erratics in the Moisie, 

 until an altitude of about 1,000 feet above the sea 

 is attained, may be explaind by the supposition 

 that they may have been carried away by icebergs 

 and coast ice during a period of submergence to the 

 extent of about 1,000 feet."^^ This is about twice 

 the elevation of any Labrador shoreline recognized 

 by Daly.^^ It may be that late valley glaciers may 

 have, in some cases, been responsible for removing 

 the abundant and widely distributed boulders left 

 by the continental ice sheet. This possibility 

 makes the upper limit of boulders a criterion of 

 doubtful value for estimating the total emergence 

 when applied to coastal valleys. The highest 

 shore lines observed by the writer on the Labrador 

 coast are those at West Modeste, north of the 

 Strait of Belle Isle, where two magnificent terraces 

 are developed behind the village. The highest of 

 these stands 500 feet A.T. according to Daly.^^ 



Certainly none of the terraces seen by the writer 

 near the twenty-odd fishing stations between Blanc 

 Sablon and Indian Harbour approach an elevation 

 of 1000 feet. The only terraces which the writer 

 has been able to measure on the south shore of the 

 Labrador peninsula are those north of the Bay of 

 Seven Islands. The nine-mile railway from the 

 Bay to Clarke City skirts the front of the highest 

 of these for two miles or more. The lower terrace 

 has a height of 155 feet according to a hand level, 

 measurement made by the writer's assistant, Mr. 

 R. H. Wetmore. The terrace is composed of blue 

 clay except the uppermost 20 to 30 feet, which is 

 sand. The upper terrace, consisting exclusively of 

 sand, stands according to aneroid measurement, 40 

 feet above the lower terrace. The town of Seven 

 Islands, opposite the shore end of the nine-mile 

 pulp-wood railway, stands on a sand flat barely 



^Letter to the writer, December 20, 1921. 



90p. cit., p. 227. 



'"Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool. Harvard Univ., VoL 38, Geol. 

 Ser. Vol. 5, No. 5, p. 258, 1902. 



"Amer. Jour. Sci., Ser. 5, Vol. I, p. 382, 1921. 



i2Can. Geol. Surv. Ann. Rept., Vol.1, 1885, p. 8 DD, 1886. 

 "Can. Geol. Surv. Mem. No. 124, p. 47, 1921 ed. 

 "Mem. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., Vol. I, p. 219, 1867. 

 i^Hind, H. Y., Can. Nat., 2nd Ser., 1, 302 (1864). 

 "Amer. Jour Sci., Vol. 1, Ser. 5, p. 384, 1921. 

 '"Op. cit. p. 384. 



