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NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



and gravel 12 feet thick. It is not altogether clear from the de- 

 scriptions of this locality whether this overlying unstratified 

 material is true till or a bed of coarse rubble washed down from 

 the mountain side on the shell bed during the higher stand of the 

 marine shore line at that place. It has apparently been assumed 

 by Sir William Dawson and others that the shells pertain to the 

 post-Wisconsin phase of depression. At the time of my visit in 

 1900 I was not, unaided, able to identify the locality. I have 

 assumed in this paper, nevertheless, that the current view of the 

 essential contemporaneity of the bed with other high level marine 

 shells in the region is correct. 



Fossils at Hemmingford, Quebec, Canada. Marine shells occur 

 in Hemmingford, about 5 miles north of Mooers Junction, in a 

 gravelly shoal on the southern margin of the village. A borrow pit 

 in a pasture opened in 1903 afforded abundant shells of S a x i - 

 cava r u g o s a in the attitude of growth in the openwork gravels 

 at depths from 18 inches to 3 feet below the surface. The shells 

 are large and strong and exhibit marked variations in form. 

 From aneroid measurements, this locality appears to have an 

 elevation of 257 feet. Saxicava also occurs in an old gravel pit on 

 the west of the road at the same locality. 



The freshness and strength of these shells at so slight a depth 

 beneath the soil in gravels open to the free percolation of rain 

 water is strong evidence against the supposition that the absence 

 of marine shells in the sands and clays deposited about the margin 

 of the retreating Wisconsin ice sheet along the sea border from 

 New York eastward to the vicinity of Boston is to be explained 

 by their removal in solution under the influence of meteoric waters 

 following an uplift of that coast from beneath the sea. 



Fossils near Mooers. The writer found marine shells on the 

 south bank of the Great Chazy in 1903, at a point on the west 

 side of the narrow ne; k of land in the sharp bend of the river % 

 mile above Thorn's corners. 1 The section there exposed shows 

 about 10 feet of compact grayish sandy till resting on the Pots- 

 dam ( ?j sandstone. The surface of this till is planed off to a 



1 A picture of this locality is given by Cushing in the Annual Report of 

 the State Geologist for 1895, pt 1, p.511, pl.III, Albany, 1896. The fossils 

 occur at and above the dark line half way up the river bluff. Thorn 

 (on the U. S. G. S. map) is given as Thorn in the state reports. 



