234 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. viii. 



While we have evidence before our eyes of the subsidence of 

 the entire country and its subsequent elevation, we can not re- 

 ject the probable supposition that previous to the subsidence the 

 whole country was far more upraised than it now is. A gene- 

 ral upward movement of 1500 feet would cut off the Arctic 

 Current, or reduce it to the dimensions of a river, both from 

 Davis and Hudson Straits, these being the only existing channels 

 between the Arctic and Atlantic on the American side.* This 

 would produce a change in climate of a very marked char- 

 acter, and give rise probably to wide spreading areas of- fresh 

 water where now sea and land appear. 



The Arctic or Labrador Current is the one great cause of the 

 extreme climate of the Labrador Coast. It keeps the bays and 

 Fiords on the whole North Eastern Coast closed by ice from 

 December to June. It permits the formation of anchor or 

 ground ice to an extraordinary extent at the commencement of 

 winter. The sea bottom freezes in sixty and seventy feet of 

 water, and fresh water flowing under the first ice formed, into 

 the sea cooled by the Arctic Current, is instantly converted into 

 spongy masses, and assists in choking the fiords. Seals taken in 

 seal nets in November and early in December in 60 feet of 

 water, are often found " frozen solid" ; and fishermen several 

 times put i£ to me as a problem passing solution, why frozen 

 seals taken from a seal net sunk to the bottom in fifteen and 

 even eighteen fathoms water, should thaw when kept for a few 

 hours at the surface. The discoveries by Desprets have explain- 

 ed all this, but at the same time they have enlarged our views 

 respecting the variety of ways in which ice can act as a geolo- 

 gical agent when an arctic current is present to assist in its for- 

 mation. 



The differences between the condition of the Labrador and 

 the Norwegian Fiords is remarkable ; while the first named are 

 closed by ice during at least six months of the year as a conse- 

 quence of the Arctic Current flowing past them, the last named, 

 according to Admiral Irminger, are kept open by a constant 

 flow of warm water from the south-west, and the effect of this 

 warm current is felt as far as Cape North. The cessation of 

 the Labrador Arctic and Davis Strait Current by a general rise 

 of the land betweeu Greenland and Labrador would greatly 



* Vide any good recent Map of the Arctic regions. 



