142 THE ICK ACJE IN CANADA. 



rents would lio allowed to cleiive more closely to the coast, 

 and the inhiil)ilants of the Acadian hay would ^'radually 

 become isolated, while tiie northern animals of Labrador 

 would work their way southward.* 



Various modern indications jwint to the .same conclu- 

 sions. Yerrill has described little colonies of southern 

 species still surviving on the coast of ]\Iaine. There are 

 also dead shells of these s])ecies in nnid baidcs, in [daces 

 where they are now extinct. He also states that the remains 

 in shell-hea})S left by the Indians indicate that even within 

 the jwriod of their occupancy some of these sjjccies 

 existed in places where they are not now fouiul. AVillis has 

 catalogued some of these species from the deej) Itays and 

 inlets on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, and has shown 

 that some of them still exist on the Sable island banks.f 



Whiteaves finds in the IJradelle and Orphan bank 

 littoral species remote from the present shores, and 

 indicating a time when these banks were islands, which 

 have been sul)merged by subsidence, aided no doubt by 

 the action of the waves. 



It would thus aj)poar that the colonization of the 

 Acadian bay wilh southern forms behjngs to the modern 

 period, but that it has already pas.-icd its culmination, 

 and the recent sul)sidcnce 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, which, should this suhsidonce go on, will creep 

 slowly back to re-occupy the ground which it once held 

 in the I*leistocene time. 



* Since my address of 1874, (lanoiig has further ilhistrated this 

 subject in the Transactions of tlie Natural History Society of New 

 Brunswick, and of the Royal .Society of Canada. 



+ Acadian Geology, p. 37. 



