Spencer — Submarine Valleys off North America. 341 



Art. XXXY. —Bibliography of Submarine Valleys off North 

 America ; by J. W. Spencer. 



Papers on the Submarine Valleys indenting the Continental Shelf 

 off the American Coast and in the West Indies / by J. W. 

 Spencer. 



The appearance of the " Submarine Great Canyon of the 

 Hudson River " has emphasized the absence of easy reference 

 to the scattered contributions where those interested have not 

 continuously been giving the subject their attention. In this 

 case, it may be expressed in the language of a gentleman, a 

 stranger to the writer, who says that he is " now much inter- 

 ested in this particular subject, but has been unable to get hold 

 'of any matter regarding it otherwise than a vague popular 

 sketch here and there which has left him about as much in the 

 dark as though he had read only the title." Some of the 

 papers are not of recent appearance. Others have been pub- 

 lished abroad. This condition is perhaps sufficient reason to 

 assemble the list of the papers. The subject is one of equal 

 interest in Europe as here, where there would be a greater 

 difficulty in knowing what had appeared on this side of the 

 Atlantic. 



In order to call the attention of the American student to what 

 has been done by Prof. Edward Hull and Prof. Fridtjof Hansen, 

 I have prepared somewhat lengthy summaries of their contri- 

 butions on this subject, as these are more difficult of access 

 here. The writer's investigations are the slow outgrowth of his 

 studies of the origin of the basins of the Great Lakes, which 

 will not be further referred to here. Otherwise, as bearing on 

 the Atlantic border the investigations began with : 



1. "High Continental Elevation preceding the Pleistocene 

 Period ;" Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., vol. i, pp. 65-70, 1889 ; Geol. 

 Mag. Lond., Ill, vol. vii, 1889. (This contains a description of 

 the submarine valleys of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and of Maine 

 to depths of over 3000 feet. The former is now known to be 

 over 5500 feet.) 



2. " Terrestrial Subsidence Southeast of the American Conti 

 nent" (a preliminary notice of the next paper) with map. Bull. 

 Geol. Soc. Am., vol. v, pp. 19-22, 1893. 



3. "Reconstruction of the Antillean Continent" with map. 

 Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., vol. vi, pp. 103-140, 1894-5. (Here is a 

 description of the submarine valleys extending beyond the buried 

 channels of great land rivers, and trenching the continental shelf 

 to abyssmal depths, from Cape Hatteras to the Gulf of Mexico 

 and in the Caribbean Sea. The evidences therefrom indicate 

 great Pliocene and Pleistocene elevations, and the land connec- 

 tion of the two Americas. This is the first constructive paper 



