219 GLACIAL PHENOMENA. 
St. Lawrence, and the few species peculiar to each deposit are 
migrations from the south—it was interesting to see that the lith- 
ological characters of the formation were the same in both. Ap- 
proaching the Baltic coast of Sweden, and nearing the city of , 
Stockholm, the train carries the traveller over extensive beds | 
of clay with exactly the scenic features and color of those of the 
coast of Maine, presenting long slopes bounded by hillocks of pale 
gray clay with furrowed sides, worn into the same peculiar shapes 
by the rains. At the fine museum of the national Geological Sur- 
vey, under the direction of Professor Torell, I was enabled to see a 
typical collection of the fossils of these clays. It was interesting 
to see the Leda truncata (L. Portlandica) so abundant in Maine 
beds, and the Yoldia pygmcea not infrequent in the Maine glacial 
beds. The abundance of this arctic Leda in deposits on both 
sides of the Atlantic shows how much more uniform was the ma- 
rine life at that time. Changes in the level of the land, and conse- 
quently in its temperature, in the ocean currents, slight though 
they were, have brought about the changes in the distribution of 
life in the New England seas. Many arctic species and arctic va- 
rieties of species, though still living on our coast, are now to be 
sought in the abysses of our seas. 
The explorations under the auspices of the United States Fish 
Commission, in the Coast Survey Steamer Bache last autumn (see 
Prof. Verrill’s report in the Amer. Jour. Science, 1872), show how - 
vividly we may restore the ancient marine life of the shores of New À 
England and the St. Lawrence river below Montreal. Here, at a . 
depth of 85-150 fathoms and over, were found living the Arca pec- : 
tunculoides, so abundant in the glacial beds of Norway, though it 
has not been found in our glacial deposits. The discovery of this 
and other animals so near our shores, as well as the results of Count 
Pourtales’ researches, and Mr. Whiteaves’ dredgings in the Gulf of 
St. Lawrence, shows that the belt of arctic life as developed on the 
coast of Finmark at the present day extends southwards in all the 
deeper parts of the Atlantic ocean north of the West Indies, with 
its outliers in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. During the glacial pe- 
riod, when the sea stood two or three hundred feet deep over the 
present coast line of Maine, and still higher over that of the 
- shores of the St. Lawrence Gulf, and Labrador, this belt of life 
was continuous up to the shallows and estuaries of the land during 
the period of the deposition of our clay beds. This fact should 
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