291 
1911-12.] Report on Rock Specimens. 
sinking. The Faroes supply additional evidence of subsidence in the 
absence of raised beaches, and in the great depth of the sounds with 
precipitous sides intervening between the islands. The great depths to 
which the seaward extension of the Iceland fjords cut the surrounding 
submerged area corresponding to the “ continental shelf,” and the sunken 
shell banks between Iceland and Jan Mayen, which according to Dr Nansen 
indicate that the region there has gone down no less than 2600 metres,* 
all point to a subsidence in post-glacial time which begins at the north of 
Scotland and increases towards the north-west. If, then, during the 
maximum glaciation, the combined Scandinavian and Scottish ice-sheet 
made its way out over the Wyville Thomson ridge, and if the continuation 
of that ridge which connects Faroe and Iceland with Greenland stood much 
higher than at present, the confluent ice-sheets emanating from Europe 
on the one side and from Greenland and Iceland on the other may have 
met and formed a barrier preventing the warm water entering into the 
polar basin by that route. The whole of the Gulf Stream would then have 
had to make its way southwards. The distribution of the material dredged 
from the Atlantic by the Michael Sars favours such a supposition. 
* Brogger, “ Norges Geologiske Undersogelse,” No. 31 (1901), pp. 94-96. Brogger’s 
summary in English, p. 683. 
(. Issued separately August 2,1912.) 
