230 A. S. PACKARD, Jr., ON THE GLACIAL PHENOMENA 



the present banks now lying off the coast be raised and exposed to view, we would have 

 an identical deposit. All the stones and pebbles of this ancient sea-bottom, finely ex- 

 posed at Hopedale, are covered with nullipores and polyzoa; the Mya truncata still 

 remains perpendicular in its holes, and the most delicate shells with their epidermis still 

 on, are unbroken, and their valves often united by the ligament. The delicate Myrio- 

 zoum has preserved its fine markings nearly as perfectly as in specimens dredged at 

 the present day, and the cases of the delicate Spiochtetopterus are still preserved. It is 

 evident that this deposit has slowly and almost imperceptibly risen some 400 or 500 feet 

 without any paroxysmal movement of the continent over an extent of coast some 600 

 miles in leno-th. 



This rise of the Labrador peninsula must have accompanied the rise of the Polar Re- 

 gions, including Arctic America and Greenland, and in fact all the land lying in the north- 

 ern hemisphere. Many facts in the distribution of fossils in these glacial beds, and the 

 present relations of these beds to deposits above and beneath them, tend to prove that 

 the glacial epoch occurred simultaneously over all the Arctic Regions and the northern tem- 

 perate zone, and that the submergence and subsequent rise of tbe continental masses and 

 outlying islands, were synchronous in both hemispheres. Professor Haughton has summed 

 up the evidence of such a rise from raised beaches and ancient sea-bottoms, in the Amer- 

 ican Arctic Archipelago. 1 The researches of Dr. Kane in the extreme north of Greenland 

 enabled him « to assert positively the interesting fact of a secular elevation [480 feet] of 

 the crust commencing at some as yet undetermined point north of 76 °, and continuing to 

 the Great Glacier and the high northern latitudes of Grinnell Land." Vol. ii. p. 81. 



We need not here allude to the similar oscillations in Northern and Central Europe to 

 still greater heights above the present level of the ocean. 



At various points along the coast from Caribou Island, where they were abundant, to 

 Hopedale, occurred in the drift gravel beds associated with the fossils, numerous pebbles 

 and small boulders of a light silicious bedded limestone, which contained numerous Silurian 

 fossils. Lieber mentions finding pieces of limestone on the shore of Aulezavik Island. 

 There can be little doubt that these boulders were transported on ice from the Silurian 

 basins in the Arctic regions on the west side of Baffin's Bay. Perhaps their origin may by 

 future observers be traced to the Silurian limestones found at the head of Frobisher's Bay, 

 by Hall. Such fragments are not now to be seen on the floe-ice coming down from the 

 north. 



A large proportion of the species mentioned in the following lists occurred in great 

 abundance, and in a good state of preservation, so that they could be compared very 

 satisfactorily with recent specimens dredged upon the coast. Most of the species, after 

 careful and repeated comparisons with the recent examples, did not present any appreci- 

 able differences. In a few instances there were characters found by which the fossils could 

 be distinguished from the recent shells of the same species, and those I have carefully 

 enumerated. 



i « 



' McCluro found shells of the Cyprina Ulandica, at the the following sub-fossil shells at Fort Kennedy, at elevations 



summit of the Coxcomb Range, in Baring Island, at an eleva- of from 100 to 500 feet : Saxicava rugosa, Tellina proxima 



t.on of 500 feet above the sea level ; Captain Parry, also, has Aslarte arctka (borcalis), Mya udderallensis, Mya truncata, 



recorded the occurrence of Venus (probably Cyprina islan- Cardium sp., Buccinum undatum, Acmea testudinalis, Bala- 



dwa) on Byam Martin's Island ; and in the recent voyage of nus uddevallensis." —Appendix to McClintocVs Narrative. 



the " I ox," Dr. Walker, the surgeon of the expedition, fouud Amer. edit. p. 370. 



