6 s ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



inwards towards the coast; one, Sambro channel, is immediately south 

 of Halifax, and the other passing to the east of Sable Island is called 

 by fishermen, the Gully. The special interest that is attached to these 

 c^epressions will be referred to at length later on. 



To the continental shelf to the south of us its extent and the 

 prominent features of the foreshore many writers have made reference. 

 Some parts have been closely examined, and special soundings liave 

 supplemented the earlier work of the British Admiralty and the Naviga- 

 tion Bureau of the United States. The results of the investigations 

 have been published,^ but of our own shores I have not been able to 

 find more than passing reference, and that little merely made to round 

 up generalizations suggested by the more southern investigations and 

 the European disquisitions on the general subject. Among those who 

 have lately written may be mentioned Dr. Chalmers of the Canadian 

 Geological Survey, Professor J. W. Spencer at one time of King's Col- 

 lege, Windsor, Dr. H. Y. Hind, Professor Hull, of England, and Mr. 

 W. Upham of the United States Survey. Their articles cover all that 

 has been published relating to the ground under review that have come 

 under the eye of the author, and tliey have left much to be still con- 

 sidered. In connection with the subject and the bearing which the 

 glacial evidences have to the special features of this region much of in- 

 terest to the student will be found in that comprehensive work — " The 

 Ice Age in North America " by Dr. G. W. Wright. 



Viewed from a provincial and more contracted standpoint, the 

 details of our immediiate neighbourhood may be dwelt on and of the 

 phenomena exhibited explanations may be offered in the light of in- 

 vestigations made and conclusions reached by others. This may be done 

 with more confidence now that deductions drawn from widespread 

 observations enable lapplication to be made to examples from our own 

 localit}' in illustration of the stupendous changes that have taken place 

 within comparatively recent geological ages, to movements of vast 

 magnitude and to results effected in periods of time appearing to us 

 individually to be of great length but which are in comparison with the 

 aeons that preceded them as the playtime of an ephemeron of yesterday. 



Some incidental references to submarine geology appear in the 

 Transactions of the Nova Scotia Institute of Science, but they are not 

 of a general character. A paper by Mr. S. D. McDonald in 1886 - is 

 replete with information on Sable Island; its history and geology. In 

 it he speaks of the existence of that island as due to the strong ocean 



^ A. Leudenkohl — Notes on the submarine channel of the Hudson River, 

 Am. Jour. Sc, June, 1891. 

 - Vol. VI., pp. 266, 278. 



