312 The American Geologist. May, i898 
New England streams appear to be adequate to account for 
but a .small part of the fifty feet which needs must be ex- 
plained in the broad and comparatively open Narragansett 
bay. It is a noticeable fact in this connection that even at 
F^-ovidence, on the narrow northern extension of the bay, the 
level of the water is unaffected by the highest spring floods,* 
forming in this respect a marked contrast with the Connecti- 
cut, Housatonic and Thames rivers. 
EVIEENCES. 
General Reasoning. — Evidences of a Champlain sub- 
sidence in the shape of elevated shore-lines and of fossiliferous 
deposits are found in a fairly continuous chain surrounding 
New England. The subsidence was least in the south, the 
evidences of the raised beaches along Long Island sovmd and 
eastward indicating, according to Dana, a submergence 
amounting only to some fifteen or twenty feet. On the coast 
of Maine, as indicated by elevated shore lines and fossils, the 
depression varied from 230 feet to nearly 300 feet, the greater 
being to the north and east. At Montreal, as shown by 
Dawson, the depression amounted to from 500 to 600 feet. 
On the west, along the valleys of the Hudson river and 
lake Champlain, the submergence, according to F. J. H. 
Merrill, amounted to 335 feet at Albany, 370 feet at the 
southern end of lake Champlain and to 500 feet at St. Albans 
(Baldwin). That the interior of New England partook of the 
same movement of subsidence is shown by the high river 
terraces everywhere abounding, and indicating, even after due 
allowance has been made for the flooded condition of the 
rivers at that time, an altitude much below that at present 
existing. 
Montreal is almost exactly 300 miles north of Long Island 
sound, hence the average increase in the amount of the sub- 
mergence to the north was i 2-}^ feet per mile. If. as urged 
by Dana, f the submergence along the coast at the mouth of 
Narragansett bay was fifteen feet, then the hight of the water 
at Providence, twenty-eight miles distant, should have been 
forty-seven feet above this level, or sixty-two feet above the 
*Am.. Jour. Sci., 3, vol. X, p. 435. 
tLoc. cit., p. 434. 
