254 BULLETIN : MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 
crest of the ridge enclosing the harbor on this side to the shore two 
hundred and fifty yards away. -Most impressive was the view along 
the rugged accumulations of boulders, rounded or subangular and 
varying in diameter from six to ten feet. From the position of the 
“beach,” it was clear that the enormous energy required to round off 
such boulders was derived from waves of great fetch and moving in 
water of some depth from the southward; that ‘is, it looks as if the 
cyclopean Felsenmeer had been built up in the lee of the ridge at a 
time when the ridge was here entirely submerged. The heavy Atlantic 
breakers of that time rifted the masses from the bed-rock and threw 
them over the col into the protected place where we now see them. 
When we also consider the fact that long stretches of the coast are 
too exposed to permit of the growth of beaches at all, it is clear that 
the discovery of general levels may be made only after several seasons 
of careful field-work. Even after such effort be expended, the quest 
may prove to be fruitless. The work that was done in this one 
summer certainly led to negative results. 
Location oF THE HicHest ELevatep SHorE-Line.— On the other 
hand, a considerable degree of success was attained in the attempt to 
fix the Azghest shore-line, 7. e., the most ancient of postglacial levels 
now warped into a form which is a resultant of all positive and negative 
movements of the land since uplift began. Along the eleven hundred 
miles of coast from St. John’s to Cape Chidley, no trustworthy estimate 
had been made as to the position of this old level. The desirability of 
filling in this gap in our knowledge is evident. De Geer has attempted 
to construct a map of northeastern North America similar to his classic 
one of the Scandinavian Peninsula, showing the character of postglacial 
uplift. His “ isobases ”’ join all points of equal uplift. The map was 
left incomplete, since, for lack of information, the isobasic curves could 
not be produced into eastern Labrador. Yet for the purposes of geo- 
logical theory, it is of the highest importance that this edge of the 
glaciated tract should be similarly treated. 
The principle used in the determination of the highest shore-line 
seems to have been in the minds of Packard and Hind during their 
early visits to the coast, but was applied by them only very locally. 
Shaler, and later Stone, used it on the coast of Maine, and it has been 
employed in Baffin’s Land by Watson and Tarr, and still more exten- 
sively in Norway, Sweden, and Finland by De Geer and other Scandi- 
navian geologists. The criterion is, in a word, that, on appropriate 
1 G. De Geer, Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., 1892, vol. 25, p. 454. 
