GEOLOGY AND SCENERY OF NORTHEAST COAST 135 



plained. With no theory to support or refute, many 

 reputable observers among the fishing population state that 

 they have time and again noted, during periods of from thirty 

 to sixty years, cases where rock-ledges have come per- 

 ceptibly nearer the sea-surface, where new channels have 

 had to be sought among the shoals for the passage of their 

 fishing-boats, and where the stages must be again and again 

 lengthened over their bed-rock foundations in order to se- 

 cure a depth of water sufficient to float their small craft. 

 A gentleman of St. John's has made a study of the question 

 for forty years, and has come to the conclusion that eleva- 

 tion is still in progress along the whole coast. He believes 

 that the rate of uplift is about twice as rapid in northern 

 Labrador as in Newfoundland. He has found among the 

 older settlements of the island some where the inhabitants 

 are in a very unfavourable position for plying their industry 

 on account of the rim of just submerged rock-ledges that 

 obstruct the harbours. He has asked the older men why 

 they chose such locations for settlement. The reply was 

 that they or their fathers had made these harbours when 

 the conditions were very different from the present ; namely, 

 when the harbours were deeper. Such qualitative evidence, 

 however great in amount, must yield in value to the testi- 

 mony of even a few bench-marks carefully distributed 

 along the coast." Here, again, a most welcome contribu- 

 tion to observational geology can be made by an expedi- 

 tion which, by so placing bench-marks, can give the geolo- 

 gists of the future a standard for the measurement of the 

 rate of crustal movement. On quantitative observations, 

 in geology no less than in all other physical sciences, hang 

 all the law and the prophets. 



