342 THE GEOLOGY OF THE LABRADOR COAST. 



The Alca impennis was probably a common bird, as it 

 was once on the shores of Scandinavia and Scotland ; 

 there are rumors extant among our oldest fishermen of 

 its having been seen years ago, but within the recollec- 

 tion of men now living, as I am informed by Professor 

 A. E. Verrill ; and its bones have occurred in the kitch- 

 en-middings of the coast of Nova Scotia and of Massa- 

 chusetts at Ipswich. It is known by Rev. Mr. Wilson, 

 a missionary in Newfoundland, to have been common 

 less than forty years ago about the Fogo Islands, on the 

 northeastern shore of Newfoundland, as I have been in- 

 formed by Mr. G. A. Boardman of Calais, Maine. 

 These birds represent the sub-arctic avi-fauna of New 

 England during the later period of the drift, and owe 

 their extinction possibly to the slow changes of the 

 climate, which must have been gradually ameliorating for 

 two centuries past in the north temperate zone, but 

 more especially to their destruction by man. 



All the facts cited above must at least tend to disprove 

 any theory of a former tertiary or post-tertiary continental 

 connection between Europe and America. The fauna 

 and flora of Labrador during the glacial period were too 

 distinct, the oceanic currents could not have allowed 

 any interchange of forms, and the great depth of the sea 

 in Baffin's Bay would have prevented such migrations as 

 Forbes supposed to have taken place from Europe. 



The geological history of the American continent, as 

 laid down so clearly by Professor Dana in the Proceed- 

 ings of the American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science for 1856, proves that the different formations 

 were, during paleozoic, mesozoic, and tertiary times, 

 built around the granitic laurentian nucleus of British 



