FISHING-GROUNDS 65 



circumference long spits of sand, like submarine Baltic 

 nehrungen. Pebbles are rare. 



There remains a series of secondary banks on either 

 side of the Cabot current. On the left-hand side these 

 banks stretch southwards as far as the Avalon peninsula, 

 between the Saint-Pierre and Miquelon Islands and the 

 Bay of Fortune in Newfoundland ; to the right they run 

 between Cape North and Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. 

 These are lateral outliers of the delta of the Cabot current, 

 which brings the sand, while the shore ice carries the 

 debris of all kinds of rocks. To sum up and this 

 applies to the Newfoundland banks as a whole 

 there have been, and are, two periods in the formation of 

 these banks : the period of transportation or deposition, 

 and the period of shaping or modelling. The Cabot 

 current and the broken packs of shore ice act like so 

 many huge ballast-trains ; the Polar current and the 

 Gulf Stream like gigantic excavators. 



V 



The banks of Iceland have quite a different history; 

 their genesis and their morphology are entirely dis- 

 similar. The better to explain them, I must first give 

 certain essential data relating to the Atlantic Ocean. 



Iceland is the visible summit of a submarine mountain. 

 This mountain is of the greatest importance, as it is from 

 its base that the three ridges run which to some extent 

 form the skeleton or the framework of the Atlantic. 

 The first has its origin on the northern slope, and runs 

 towards the Arctic Ocean and Greenland. The second is 

 the prolongation of the south-western spur of the island. 

 It commences at Reykjanes Point, forms the foundation 

 of the Fuglasker Islands, and on leaving the neighbour- 

 hood of Iceland plunges into the depths, runs in a south- 



5 



