Long Island Sound in the early Quaternary. 281 
the sea-border towns that any shells had been found in the drift 
deposits * 
Long Island Sound—the strip of water, 100 miles long and 
5 to 20 miles wide, separating Long Island from Connecticut— 
is a very shallow trough. Its depth from its western limit to 
the mouth of the Connecticut river nowhere exceeds (as the 
Coast Survey charts show) 170 feet, and in general is between 
75 and 100 feet; and through the small eastern portion, east of 
the Connecticut, it is for the most part under 200 feet. The 
depth was probably less than this in the Glacial era, since there 
is strong evidence that the water line was then at least 100 feet 
low its present level. However this be, so shallow a trough 
should have been occupied throughout with ice, if the glacier 
over Southern Connecticut were 1 500 feet in thickness, or even 
und than now exists. But, with the melting going 
forward, the great stream of the Sound would have been 
swollen immensely in volume, and finally have borne icebergs 
seaward 
Such being the glacial conditions, the continuance of mollus- 
can, articulate and verbetrate marine life in the Sound, like that 
now existing there, would have been impossible, and an ex- 
beaches to refer to as proof, the evidence of this, fails us. The 
iene had probably exterminated the temperate-climate life 
f € 
bowlders, from one ton to two thousand tons in weignt, of New 
Fngland origin, show that the ice stretched on from t 
* Prof. Mather in his New York Geological Report (p. 262) gives, from the verbal 
Teports of tliety, thetioastin rosbectitig: te discovery of shells on —— 
Upper 
depths varying f i more than a hundred feet, shells are 
have been “obtained fas Guieeuuns Island, in New York Harbor, at a depth of 
about 100 feet. None of the shells or localities have ever been 
Reologist, so that the precise value of the evidence is still in doubt. 
