114 The American Geologist. Feb. isoo. 
or of beach accumulations, but were submerged so deeply, if this 
hj'pothesis be true, that their outlines, as heaped under the sea along 
the edge of the ice-sheet, were not remodeled by the waves of great 
storms. After the departure of the ice, this island was uplifted accord- 
ing to Prof. Shaler, not lees than 300 feet, that is, to its present level or 
higher, with paroxysmal suddenness, the time occupied in this move- 
ment being surely not so long as even a few days, else the moraine and 
its frontal terrace plain would be marked by unmistakable shore lines. 
The channels extending across the plain from the moraine to the 
sea, with their bottoms running below the sea level, are thought by 
this author to have been cut by submarine streams out-flowing from 
beneath the ice-sheet. 
An alternative hypothesis, which should be compared with the fore- 
going, is held by Mr. Warren Upham, who some ten years ago studied 
the geology of this island, publishing his results in the American 
Naturalist for August and the American Journal of Science for Septem- 
ber, 1879. He thinks that this moraine, while it was accumulating 
along the ice-border, was even higher above the sea than now, and 
that the channels extending from it southward and passing beneath 
the ocean level were then eroded by the floods discharged during the 
summer melting from the surface of the ice and thence flowing down 
to the sea. According to this view also, Martha's Vineyard and 
Long Island, which show similar stream-courses crossing their south- 
ern plains from the terminal moraine to the sea, stood likewise higher 
when their drift deposits were formed. Furthermore the absence of 
shore lines and of fossiliferous marine beds overlying the glacial drift 
indicates that no portion of these areas has been submerged and 
re-elevated since the retreat of the ice. 
At the present time there is known to be a slow depression of the 
land in progress along the greater part of the coast from New Jersey 
to Cape Breton island. Professor Shaler in this memoir shows, by 
submerged beds of peat and the stump of a tree rooted where it grew, 
that this recent depression in Nantucket has amounted at least to five 
or six feet. It appears, however to be more than this, from the fol- 
lowing statement in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 
London, vol. xvii, 1861, p. 382: "In the harbour of Nantucket there 
is a submarine forest. In dredging the estuary. Lieutenant Prescott 
found trunks and roots of the cedar, oak, maple and beach, some of 
them standing upright and still attached to the soil on which they 
flourished. The trees * * * * are eight feet below the level of 
the lowest tide." 
RECENT PUBLICATIONS. 
1. State and Government reports. 
Bulletin of the University of Texas. Roads and material for their 
construction in the Black Prairie region of Texas. Eobt. T. Hill. 
