THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



coveries at different points along the foreshore, and were 

 successful beyond my wildest hopes. Not only were 

 numerous fragments and many whole valves of the Pecten 

 obtained at all elevations up to fifty feet above sea-level, 

 but in several spots fragments of the shell of an Anatina, 

 a mollusc which still flourishes abundantly in the sea on 

 the other side, were very numerous, and in one place, by 

 digging down several inches into the sand with the lid 

 of a cocoa-tin, I secured two double-valve shells of 

 another species of bivalve which I have seen commonly in 

 our biologist's dredge. 



From the abundance of the shells I have no doubt at 

 all that this was a genuine raised beach, and the recent 

 nature of the shells points to the probability of the rise of 

 the land being still in progress. A few shells might have 

 been cast up by the waves of a storm during the short 

 time that the bay is free from ice or ice-foot, but the vast 

 number of the organic remains precludes the possibility of 

 their having all been cast up by this means, while a still 

 stronger point is the nature and wholeness of the shells: 

 both the Pecten and the Anatina possess shells of extreme 

 fragility, and we cannot suppose that they could be hurled 

 about by waves capable of throwing them hundreds of 

 yards up the gravel banks without being smashed to 

 atoms. Yet hundreds of valves of the Pecten especially 

 were practically intact, ears and all, and the only way to 

 account for their presence so far out of their native 

 element is on the supposition of a gradual rising of the 

 land, such as, from evidence recently brought to light, 

 appears to be taking place along large stretches of the 

 western coast of the Sound. 



There were large mud-flats bordering the ice-foot in 

 this valley, and these reached their greatest extent where 

 they were augmented by the deltaic material of the many 

 streams draining the vaUey, and on them, a few feet above 



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