Upham.J 42 [March 15, 
Farther inhiiid tliroughout Massachusetts, Mr. George H. 
Barton iinds the trends of the drunilins prevailingly parallel with 
the striation, but with occasional exceptions where the longer 
axes of drunilins vary much from this course, probably because 
ot" small indentations in the glacial boundary and consequent di- 
vergence of the latest ice-motion from its previous direction. 
THE FISHING BANKS BETWEEN CAPE COD AND 
NEWFOUNDLAND. 
BY WARREN UrHAM. 
Along a distance of about a thousand miles east-northeastward 
from Cape Cod the submarine border of the North American 
continent presents very remarkable irregularities of contour. 
The sea bed there in its descent from the present coast lines to 
the abyssal depths of the North Atlantic ocean differs entirely 
from the smooth and gently inclined plane of the submerged 
continental slope along its next thousand miles south to the 
Strait of Florida and the Bahama Islands. Instead we find by 
soundings from Cape Cod to the Grand Bank of Newfoundland 
that this section of our coast has a profusion of submerged hills 
and broad plateaus, elevated from 100 to 1000 feet above the 
intervening valleys and adjacent low portions of the sea bed, 
from which they rise nearly to the sea level but only in a single 
instance reach above it, forming Sable Island. These plateaus, 
covered by water ranging mostly from 10 to 50 fathoms in depth, 
sustain luxuriant submarine vegetation, abimdant moUuscan life, 
and vast schools of cod, haddock, mackerel, halibut, and other 
food fishes, which almost from the time of first discovery and 
exploration of this coast have caused its submerged plateaus to 
be the site of important fisheries and thence to be known as 
Fishing Banks. 
In their order from southwest to northeast, the more extensive 
of these plateaus are the St.' George's, Western or Sable Island, 
Banquereau, St. Pierre, and Green Banks, and, most north- 
eastern and by far the largest, the Grand Bank of Newfound- 
land. 
