254 BULLETIN : MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 



crest of the ridge enclosing the harbor on this side to the shore two 

 hundred and fifty yards away. Most impressive was the view along 

 the rugged accumulations of boulders, rounded or subangular and 

 varying in diameter from six to ten feet. From the position of the 

 " beach," it was clear that the enormous energy required to round off 

 such boulders was derived from waves of great fetch and moving in 

 water of some depth from the southward ; that is, it looks as if the 

 cyclopean Felsenmeer had been built up in the lee of the ridge at a 

 time when the ridge was here entirely submerged. The heavy Atlantic 

 breakers of that time rifted the masses from the bed-rock and threw 

 them over the col into the protected place where we now see them. 



When we also consider the fact that long stretches of the coast are 

 too exposed to permit of the growth of beaches at all, it is clear that 

 the discovery of general levels may be made only after several seasons 

 of careful field-work. Even after such effort be expended, the quest 

 may prove to be fruitless. The work that was done in this one 

 summer certainly led to negative results. 



Location of the Highest Elevated Shore-Line. — On the other 

 hand, a considerable degree of success was attained in the attempt to 

 fix the highest shore-line, i. e., the most ancient of postglacial levels 

 now warped into a form which is a resultant of all positive and negative 

 movements of the land since uplift began. Along the eleven hundred 

 miles of coast from St. John's to Cape Chidley, no trustworthy estimate 

 had been made as to the position of this old level. The desirability of 

 filling in this gap in our knowledge is evident. De Geer has attempted 

 to construct a map of northeastern North America similar to his classic 

 one of the Scandinavian Peninsula, showing the character of postglacial 

 uplift. 1 His " isobases " join all points of equal uplift. The map was 

 left incomplete, since, for lack of information, the isobasic curves could 

 not be produced into eastern Labrador. Yet for the purposes of geo- 

 logical theory, it is of the highest importance that this edge of the 

 glaciated tract should be similarly treated. 



The principle used in the determination of the highest shore-line 

 seems to have been in the minds of Packard and Hind during their 

 early visits to the coast, but was applied by them only very locally. 

 Shaler, and later Stone, used it on the coast of Maine, and it has been 

 employed in Baffin's Land by Watson and Tarr, and still more exten- 

 sively in Norway, Sweden, and Finland by De Geer and other Scandi- 

 navian geologists. The criterion is, in a word, that, on appropriate 



1 G. De Geer, Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., 1892, vol. 25, p. 454. 



