467 
[De Geer. 
the gravel and sand as well as the clay, were to be seen only on 
the lower parts of the island, probably up to about 200 feet. 
The first point where I saw anything like the marine limit was 
two miles northeast of Somes Sound, just east of the trivium on 
the western slope of McFarland’s Mountain. Up to an apparently 
horizontal line the soil was covered with residuary boulders, but 
just above it unmodified till was exposed at the side of the road. 
The approximate height of the shore-line was according to the an- 
eroid c. 1 204 feet (62 m.), and according to angles measured to 
the surrounding mountains c. 216 (66 m.) drz 12 feet. 
East of Somes Sound, in the pass between Brown’s and Sar- 
gent’s Mountains, at the height of between 330 and 200 feet no 
traces of marine action upon the till were seen, though the south- 
ern slope must have faced the open Atlantic, if this ever reached 
so far ; but as soon as we came down to the 200 foot contour line, 
well washed and assorted material occurred abundantly as a gravel- 
bar east of Haddock’s Lower Pond. I had not time to fix the ac- 
tual limit at this locality, but the approximate height of the bar 
was according to the aneroid c. 190 feet (58 m.). 
The curious rock benches seen at many places on the slopes of 
the granite mountains seem to be very closely connected wdth the 
occurrence of vertical and horizontal joint lines in the rock ; we 
visited several of these on Jordan’s Hill, Sargent’s Mountain and 
The Cleft. Level benches are often formed by weathering where 
rocks are horizontally jointed, so that this important characteris- 
tic of marine action in other cases is in itself of no value here, 
unless other common shore features, as beaches with water worn 
pebbles and ordinary cut and built terraces of till, together with 
marine sediment, can be shown to exist. Furthermore in sev- 
eral places the joints and the benches were inclined from 5° to 20°, 
and nowhere exhibited the characteristic and very regular appear- 
ance of the rock cut marine terraces in Norway and Spitzbergen. 
On the open southern surface of Sargent’s Mountain we ob- 
served numerous small patches of till, often with well striated 
stones ; and numerous stones and much isolated debris occurred 
scattered over the surface in such a way that they must have been 
swept away very quickly by the waves from the Atlantic if they 
were ever submerged. 
‘Abbreviation of circa (about), noting an approximate measurement. 
