374 THE GEOLOGICAL H{STORY OF THE 
relatively higher and thus above sea-level. If subsequently 
submerged and buried by deposits, as seems not unlikely, the 
beds have been removed along with those that have disappeared 
from above the present surface of the Triassic beds to the north. 
From the above we have reason to believe that displacement 
along this fault began in Pre-Carboniferous times, continued after 
the deposition of the Horton series of beds, and had not reached 
its present proportions when the Triassic rocks of the valley 
were being laid down. There has probably been no perceptible 
displacement within recent times, but the slow movement of 
elevation or subsidence that separated the broken. ends of the 
same beds one half a mile in the lapse of time between the 
earliest Carboniferous and the Glacial Periods, may still be pro- 
ceeding at the same rate and the movement since the Glacial 
Period remain unnoticed. 
We can scarcely leave the subject without attempting to 
decipher some of the faint records of that Paleeozoic valley land 
and bay, the traces of which lie, for the most part, beneath the 
surface accummulations of more recent geological periods. The 
slate was then, as now, a surface rock, along the coast at least, 
as its unconformable contact with the sandstones and the presence 
of its fragments among their constituents plainly indicate. The 
region was also subsiding, as the passage of coarse shallow-water 
sediments up into fine muddy beds, characteristic of deeper, 
quieter water as plainly proves. The land lay to the south as 
the derivation of the sediments testifies. As the sea advanced, 
the coast line must have retreated and its changing outline, for 
any particular time, is very difficult tofix. It would seem, how- 
ever, that for the time represented by the basal Wolfville 
sandstones the coast line must have followed approximately their 
present line of contact with the slates, outlined earlier in the 
paper, which was then more nearly horizontal; its present. 
departure from that level being readily explainable by the 
subsequent displacement along the Gaspereau fault plane. 
The early existence of the Wolfville ridge and its undoubted 
westwardly continuation, would form a barrier then as now to 
