W. Upham — Fishing Banhs. 129 



shells of the banks and their vicinity, and have many others 

 on hand not yet described. Probably many of the fossils 

 may be identical with these newly recorded or unrecorded 

 species, but a very long and laborious study can alone deter- 

 mine how many are recent, owing to their imperfect condi- 

 tion. " In the light of this lately added knowledge of the 

 fauna of our submarine continental border,* it seems very 

 probable that these rocks will prove of Pliocene rather than 

 Miocene age. Their uplift and subaerial erosion took place, 

 therefore, as already indicated in the preceding part of this 

 paper, at the close of the Tertiary era and immediately before 

 the Glacial period. 



The Fishing Banks are thus to be accounted, like the fjords 

 of all our northern coasts, the submerged continuation of the 

 Hudson River channel, and the similar very deep submarine 

 valleys off the shore of California near Cape Mendocino, to 

 which I have previously called attention,f as evidence of a 

 great epeirogenic uplift of the northern part of this continent 

 preceding and producing the Ice age. 



Note. — Referring to Mr. J. B. Woodworth's suggestion in this 

 Journal for Jan., 1894, p. 71, that pebbles carved by wind-blown 

 sand should be looked for among the stones dredged from the 

 Fishing Banks, it should be borne in mind that the high uplift 

 exposing these areas to subaerial erosion was preglacial, and that 

 when the ice-sheet disappeared the coast from Boston to Nova 

 Scotia was depressed somewhat below its present height. Al- 

 though this depression of the land probably carried the Fishing 

 Banks and the border of the ice-sheet there below the sea level, a 

 small postglacial uplift of the seaboard, which is known to have 

 raised the land at the head of the Bay of Fundy at least 80 feet 

 higher than now, may have laid bare considerable parts of the 

 Fishing Banks so that their present surface stones could be worn 

 by drifting sand dunes. (See former articles in this Journal, III, 

 vol. xxxvii, pp. 359-372, May, 1889, and vol. xliii, pp. 201-209, 

 March, 1892.) 



* Previous to 1870 the known molluscan fauna of the seas of northeastern 

 America comprised about 290 species ; but now, according to Prof. Verrill, it 

 numbers 500 or more. In comparison with this we may note that the British Isles 

 have about 600 species of marine mullusks, and the whole of Europe about 800. 

 (Prestwich's Geology, vol. i, pp. 120-121). 



f " Probable Causes of Glaciation. " Appendix of Wright's Ice Age in North 

 America, 1889, pp. 573-595. Bulletin G. 8. A., vol. i, 1890, pp. 563-567. Amer. 

 Geologist, vol. vi, Dec, 1890, pp. 327-339. 



Am. Jour. Sci.— Third Series, Vol. XLYII, No. 278.— Feb., 1894. 

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