276 SABLE ISLAND—MACDONALD. 
Before us this evening we have a fair sample of sand taken 
from Sable Island. The cor-relation of this material with that of 
Sir Wm. Logan’s is very striking. There are few or no boulders 
found on the Island. The sands are siliceous and carry magne 
tite and garnets, in every way equivalent to the Champlain 
sands, 
This deposit at Montreal has an elevation of 500 feet, and may 
be traced in a continuous line 400 miles to Nantucket, where it 
merges into the off shore deposit. 
It is evident we cannot hesitate in referring those sands to the 
same origin. 
It would be idle to speculate on the probability of this whole 
‘off shore deposit which the currents have moulded and detached, 
being once above the surface. 
Yet, 1 think this re-elevation that took place at the close of the 
Champlain period that uplifted those sands 500 fcet at Montreal 
and gave Sable Island such an elevation that at this later period 
after its being for ages exposed to the ravages of the waves 
of the broad Atlantic so much is yet visible, would be quite ade- 
quate to uplift the whole embankment and form a sand continent 
equal in extent to the combined area of Nova Scotia and New- 
foundland. 
At the opening of this, or what is known as the modern 
period, we have entered upon another downward movement, a 
gradual subsidence being now in progress over the whole 
northern part of this continent, of which there is ample proof. 
By observations at Nantucket and other points along the 
eastern seaboard, the subsidence has been 30 feet. The inun: 
dations that have of late so perplexed the railway people 
and farmers along the New Jersey coast attest to this change 
of level. In our own province we have the evidence given. 
by the submerged forest at Bay Verte and other places in the 
Bay of Fundy ; aiso the difficulties of keeping up the dykes 
at Grand Pre, owing to, as the farmers say, the tides rising higher 
than formerly, and the fact of hundreds of acres of grass lands 
being given up to the sea from the same cause, no later than last 
winter at Horton, 
