374 THE GEOLOGICAL H 1STORY OF THE 



relatively higher and thus above sea-level. If subsequently- 

 submerged and buried by deposits, as seems not unlikely, tln> 

 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 or 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 Palaeozoic 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 to fix. 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- 



