[POOLE] FEATURES OF CONTINENTAL SHELF OFF NOVA SCOTL\ 79 



Musquodoboit river through the harbour of that name, and its fiats 

 to the sea, and lie refers to tlie La Have, East and Sutherland's rivers 

 as also showing their ancient but now submerged extensions under the 

 sea. (Yol. YIII., Pt. 2, p. 116.) 



Dr. x\mbrose. Vol. I., Pt. 4, p. o3 of the Xova Scotia Instit. of Sc. 

 Series, describes the trough in St. Margaret's Bay which fishermen call 

 the ' hospital,' a mud covered ravine about 50 yards wide, 20 yards 

 deeper than the rocky walls which run parallel to the shore off Peggy's 

 Cove and opens into a similar channel running up the bay. He also 

 speaks of the Inner and Big Gulches both bottomed with black mud the 

 former a mile long and 60 fms. wide, the latter three miles long and 

 100 fms wide. These like the submerged channels mentioned by Mr. 

 Prest were probably occupied by ice when the glacial drift was carried 

 over them further out to sea. 



Dr. D. Honeyman refers shortly to the view of Sir J. W. Dawson 

 and of himself on the position of the terminal moraine of the Ice Age 

 and to the formations to which belong the various boulders and pebbles 

 brought up by the lines of fishermen on the banks in waters 60 +o 80 

 fms. deep. 



In Vol. Vit., p. 211, he contends also that glacial transportation 

 did not extend beyond Thum Cap at the entrance of Halifax Harbour. 



Mr. W. Upham in his paper on The Fishing Banks, 1893, p. 47. 

 includes those off Nova Scotia but he does not deal with details respect- 

 ing them. He speaks of rock specimens obtained on the banks and 

 seems to have accepted the views of Professor Verril, whom he quotes, as 

 being of opinion " on examination of the specimens l^rought up from the 

 banks^ by the lines of fishermen that they have been detached from a very 

 extensive submerged Tertiary formation at least several hundreds of 

 miles in length, extending along the outer banks from Newfoundland to 

 Cape Cod, and perhaps constituting a large part of the solid foundation 

 of these remarkable submarine elevations." He further expresses belief 

 that the fossils in some of the specimens are probably Pliocene, the age, 

 according to' Mr. Upham, '•' of the strata which beneath a thin envelope 

 of glacial drift form these submarine banks." On the other hand Dr. 

 Hone}Tnan points to boulders of limestone got in 65 fms. ofB the Nova 

 Scotian coast as suggestive of a base of Carboniferous age to the banlvs. 

 All, however, are agreed, as taught years go by Professor Agassiz, that 

 the 'fishing banks are at least superficially covered by a continuation of 

 the deposits forming the terminal moraine to the ice sheet of New Eng- 

 land and Canada. Whether the superficial deposit is only a thin en- 

 velope, and the detached fossiliferous rock fragments of a local deposit 

 of a previous age and not of deti'itus brought in glacial times or more 



