PHYSICAL AND CLIMATAL CONDITIONS. 141 



present, and he seems to think that this may either have 

 been coincident with a lower level of the land sufficient to 

 establish a shallow water channel, connecting the bay of 

 Fundy with the Gulf, or with a higher level raising many 

 of the banks on the coast of Nova Scotia out of water. 

 Geological facts, which I have illustrated in my Acadian 

 Geology, indicate the latter as the probable cause. We 

 know that the eastern coast of America has in modern 

 times been gradually subsiding. Further, the remarkable 

 submarine forests in the bay of Fundy show that 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 actu- 

 ally 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 oFits 

 temperature both by this and by the greater amount of 

 neighbouring land, but, as Prof . Verrill well states, it would 

 also raise the banks off the Nova Scotia coast, and extend- 

 ing 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 subsidence of the land would 

 produce a relapse toward the glacial age, the arctic cur- 



* Acadian Geology, p. 29. 



