F 
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. 
