256 A. S. PACKARD, Jr., ON TPIE GLACIAL PHENOMENA 



At Point Shirley we have good evidence of the beginning of the Virginian fauna, where 

 Venus mercenaria and Buccinum plicosum abound. This must have been the northern limits 

 of the fauna so well developed, as noticed by Desor, in the beds of Nantucket, where the 

 temperature of the sea could have scarcely differed from that of the present period. The 

 same may be said of the post-tertiary fauna of South Carolina, and, from what little we 

 know, of that of Florida, where the heated Gulf Stream evidently preserved the same condi- 

 tions as now, only more checked in its northern limits than at present by impinging more 

 directly on a coast lined with floating ice, as that of Maine must have been in post-tertiary 

 times. 



At such a time the increased degree of moisture must have produced a much greater rain 

 fall, the fogs must have been of greater extent, and the snow line must have approached 

 much nearer the sea, than at present, on the eastern coast of America, south of lat. 60°, and 

 glaciers of great extent must have surrounded the mountains of New England. The land 

 fauna and flora must have been that of Labrador. The bison, the Phoca (Pagophilus) groen- 

 landfca, the Beluga vermontana, and among plants, the Potentilla tridentata and Arenaria groen- 

 landica, (both of which are now found in the colder parts of the coast of Maine,) must have 

 been the characteristic species. Eemnants of such a flora and fauna we now behold on our 

 alpine summits. On the top of Mount Washington, the last 500 feet exhibit a purely sub- 

 arctic or Labrador vegetation. We can scarcely call it arctic, for the dwarf spruces and firs 

 are of the same size as in the more unprotected places in Labrador. The same species 

 of weasel which abounds in Labrador, we have seen on the summit of Mount Washington. 

 The insect fauna we must believe is an outlier of the Labrador sub-arctic assemblage of in- 

 sects, though with certain features of its own. While some Diptera, Coleoptera, and Lepid- 

 optera are identical, certain species, such as Chionobas semidea, Argynnis Mordiims Scudder, 

 differ slightly from any yet found in Labrador, though they may yet be found further 

 north, or may prove to be local species, remnants of a sub-arctic fauna which peopled the 

 surface of New England, living between the coast and the snow line in the interior. As the 

 line of perpetual snow retreated up the mountain sides, the more hardy species followed^ 

 while many others doubtless died in the great changes of climate and topography which 

 ushered in the historic period. As there are aerial or alpine outliers, relics of this ancient 

 sub-arctic fauna and flora, so we must consider the present abyssal forms, and outliers of the 

 Labrador marine fauna, — such as inhabited the Banks of Nova Scotia and Northern New 

 England, and the cold waters of the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, — as the remnants of the 

 Syrtensian fauna, which during the glacial period must have been spread very uniformly 

 over this area. 



The arctic sea-birds even now breed upon the islands in the mouth of the Bay of 

 Fundy, as they do on the coast of Labrador. I am told by fishermen that the Puffin, ATonnon 

 arctica, used to breed on Mount Desert. The Aha impemus was probably a common bird, as 

 it was once on the shores of Scandinavia and Scotland ; there are rumors extant among our 

 oldest fishermen of its having been seen years ago, but within the recollection of men now 

 living, as I am informed by Professor A. E. Verrill ; and its bones have occurred in the 

 kitchen-middings of the coast of Nova Scotia. It is known by Rev. Mr. Wilson, a mission- 

 ary in Newfoundland, to have been common less than forty years ago about the Fogo Isl- 

 ands, on the northeastern shore of Newfoundland, as I have. been informed by Mr. G. A. 

 Boardman of Calais, Maine. These birds represent the sub-arctic avi-fauna of New England 

 during the later period of the drift, and owe their extinction possibly to the slow changes 



