308 K. A. DALY OSCILLATIONS OF LEVEL 



England. The contrast appears in the degree of cliffing and fretting of 

 hard rocks, in the nnmber and development of beaches, and in the size, 

 assortment, and rounding of beach cobbles. The uplift was doubtless 

 synchronous, or nearly so, with the uplift of Maine, though somewhat 

 greater in average amount. Hence the greater intensity of wave-action 

 in Labrador is hardly ascribable to longer exposure of its emerged belt 

 to the waves. Any difference in the terranes of the two regions makes the 

 contrast all the more noteworthy, for the Labrador coast is much poorer 

 in glacial drift and other weak material than the Maine coast. Nor can 

 appeal be made to different degrees of storminess of the adjacent seas. 

 The only remaining variable in the problem is the strength of the waves, 

 as this is controlled by the wave fetch. The Labrador coast during sub- 

 mergence seems to have been exposed to the full fury of the Atlantic. 

 If the Gulf of Maine were largely landlocked at the same time, the waves 

 beating on its shores must have been much weaker than the waves of the 

 Labrador coast. As a matter of fact, they seem to have been decidedly 

 weaker than the waves which constructed the superb boulder beaches on 

 Hogland Island, in the Gulf of Finland, and at other places in the 

 nearly landlocked Yoldia Sea of Europe. One may well doubt that the 

 elevated strands of Maine betoken wave power as great as that character- 

 izing the waves of Lake Superior at its higher late Glacial levels. 



All observers have found the highest strand-level of Maine to be poorly 

 marked in the usual ways. Nevertheless, evidence is not wanting that the 

 sea stood near the highest level for a comparatively long time. The well 

 known clay plains of the emerged tract are chiefly developed in the long 

 bays that existed during the submergence. The larger bays, inclosed by 

 shores of till or bedrock, were filled with the clay and sand to heights of 

 100 to 200 feet or more above present sealevel. These outwash deposits 

 have maximum widths of several miles and maximum depths approaching 

 200 feet. The sediments were laid down when the sea was at or not far 

 below its highest level. There seems, indeed, to be no evidence that 

 uplift began until the clays and sands of the old bays had been largely 

 deposited. 



In this connection a recent memoir on the Newington moraine, stretch- 

 ing from Newburyport, Massachusetts, to Portland, Maine, bears signifi- 

 cant conclusions. Its authors state that all the clays and sands of the 

 coastal plains and bay fillings must be "regarded as a stratigraphic unit 

 that was deposited uninterruptedly during a period perhaps beginning 

 before the Newington substage, but certainly continuing through and 

 after it." They note that the ice-front stood in the sea during the New- 

 ington substage and continue : 



