OSCILLATIONS OF THE COAST 27 
mergence of its edges. The occurrence of terraces 
of sand and gravel at a height of from two to three 
hundred feet above the present tide-level—several 
of which we examined—containing marine shells 
of species still living in the Arctic seas proves an 
upward lift of the coast-line in comparatively 
recent times. A still more recent movement, but 
in a downward direction, is demonstrated by a 
comparison of a series of photographs, taken over 
a period of several years by the Danish geologist, 
K. J. V. Steenstrup, which shows that the tangled 
mass of brown seaweed which clings to the foot 
of the cliffs at low water is slowly creeping up- 
wards. The fact that iron rings for ships’ cables 
fastened into the rocks on the west coast are ex- 
posed only at low tide is confirmatory evidence 
that, on the west coast at least, Greenland is 
sinking. 
The fossil-bearing rocks it was our aim to in- 
vestigate are exposed along the shore and in the 
ravines of Disko and other islands and especially 
on the Nagssuaq Peninsula. Most of them were 
deposited during the Cretaceous period; others are 
Tertiary in age. Slabs of rock detached with the 
aid of a pick-axe from the side of a ravine where 
the hills are made of a succession of sheets of 
sediment—the sands and muds of some ancient 
lake or lagoon—are found to be covered with the 
clearly outlined impressions of large leaves like 
those of the Plane or Tulip tree, fronds of ferns 
hardly distinguishable from species (of the genus 
