Upham.] 46 [March ij, 
That the [)oric)il oi' uplift was tlie late Tertiary and early 
Quaternary is sliovvn by tlie age of the strata which, beneath a 
thin envelope of glacial drift, form these submarine banks. In 
1877 Prof. C. II. Hitchcock suggested that the Fishing Banks 
are of Tertiary age' ; and much earlier Agassiz liad taught his 
classes tliat they must consist superficially of drift, the eastern 
continuation of the drift sheet of the northern United States and 
of Canada. Both these theories were fully justified in 1878, 
when in the service of the U. S. Fish Commission at Gloucester, 
Mass., I gathered from the fishermen of that port many speci- 
mens of rocks that had been brought u|> from the bottom of the 
Fishing Banks by their lines becoming entangled in the coralline 
growths attaclied to these rock masses. A large proportion of 
the stones so drawn up are rounded and subangular fragments of 
granitic, gneissic, and schistose rocks, evidently transported to 
their present })osition through the agency of ice, either by an 
ice-slieet during the Glacial jjeriod, as was doubtless true for a 
large part of this di-ift, or by icebergs and floes, which still are 
contributing yearly to the drift of the Grand Bank. Apparently 
a smaller proportion, but more likely to be brought ashore by the 
fishermen, consists of fossiliferous sandstone and limestone, 
often well filled with shells or with their emj^ty casts. Manj' 
of these fossiliferous rock fragments, varying from one pound to 
a hundred pounds or more in weight, were collected and sub- 
mitted to Prof. A. E. Verrill for determination of their s|)ecies, 
concerning which he wrote as follows in the American journal 
of science for October, 1878 (ser. 3, v. 16, p. 323-324). 
Among the most important results of the investigations made by tlie 
party connected Avith the U. S. Pish Commission, stationed at Glouces- 
ter, Mass., during the present season, is the discovery of fi-agments 
of a hitherto unknown geological formation, apparently of great extent, 
belonging probably to the Miocene or later Tertiary. The evidence 
consists of numerous large fragments of eroded, but hard, compact, cal- 
careous sandstone and arenaceous limestone, usually perforated by the 
burrows of Saxiravn ru(/osa, and containing in more or less abundance 
fossil .shells, fragments of lignite, and in one case aspatangoid sea-urchin. 
Probably nearly one-half of the species are northern forms, still living 
on the New England coast, whilo many others are unknown upon our 
coasts and are apparently, for the most part, extinct. From George's 
1 Geology of New Ilauipshiro, vol. 2, ji. 21. 
