16 



THE .MODERN PERIOD. 





within a time not sufficient to produce the decay of pine wood, this 

 depression has taken place to the extent of at least 40 feet, and 

 probably to 60 feet or more. We have thus direct geological 

 evidence of a former higher condition of the land, which may, when 

 at its maximum, have greatly exceeded that above indicated, since 

 we cannot trace the submarine forests as far below the sea-level as 

 they actually extend. The effect of such an elevation of the land 

 would be not only a general shallowing of the water in the Bay of 

 Fundy and the Acadian Bay, and an elevation of its temperature 

 both by this and by the greater amount of neighbouring land, but, as 

 Professor Verrill well states, it would also raise the banks of the 

 Nova Scotia coast, and extending south from Newfoundland, so as to 

 throw the Arctic current further from the shore and warm the water 

 along the coasts of Nova Scotia and Northern New England. In 

 these circumstances the marine animals of Southern New England 

 might readily extend themselves all around the coasts of Nova Scotia 

 and Cape Breton, and occupy the Acadian Bay. The modern sub- 

 sidence of the land would produce a relapse towards the Glacial age, 

 the Arctic currents would be allowed to cleave more closely to the 

 coast, and the inhabitants of the Acadian Bay would gradually 

 become isolated, while the northern animals of Labrador would work 

 their way southward. 



Various modern indications point to the same conclusions. Verrill 

 has described little colonies of southern species still surviving on the 

 coast of Maine. There are also dead shells of these species in mud- 

 banks, in places where they are now extinct. lie also states that the 

 remains in shell-heaps left by the Indians indicate that even within 

 the period of their occupancy some of these species existed in places 

 where they are not now found. Willis has catalogued some of these 

 species from the deep bays and inlets on the Atlantic coast of Nova 

 Scotia, and has shown that some of them still exist on the Sable 

 Island banks.* 



Whiteaves finds in the Bradelle and Orphan bank littoral species 

 remote from the present shores, and indicating a time when these 

 banks were islands, which have been submerged by subsidence, 

 aided no doubt by the action of the waves. 



It would thus appear that the colonization of the Acadian Bay 

 with southern forms belongs to the modern period, but that it has 

 already passed its culmination ; and the recent subsidence of the coast 

 has no doubt limited the range of these animals, and is probably still 

 favouring the gradual inroads of the Arctic fauna from the north, 



* Ac. Geol., chap. iii. p. 37. 



