Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ... 30 CHAPTER II THE OUTLINES OF THE ATLANTIC OCEAN The Canadian shield. The Baltic shield. Glint lines. The table-land of Spitzbergen. Greenland. The Caledonian mountains. The Armorican mountains. The Variscian mountains. The syntaxis of Central Europe. The Iberian Meseta. Survey of the prePermian mountains in Europe. The islands of Europe. Western Africa. The east of Central and South America. Survey of the outlines of the Atlantic. Tlie Canadian Shield. The whole of the north-east of America, from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to that of the Mackenzie, together with the adjacent islands of the Arctic Ocean, belongs to a broad table-land of horizontal Palaeozoic beds, from beneath which the Archaean foundation crops out in the middle of the table-land not unlike a flat shield. This Archaean shield is thus surrounded by a ring of horizontally stratified sediments. The primaeval rocks composing it were not only folded in preCambrian times, but were also exposed to severe denudation, so that the Palaeozoic series rests on the planed-down edges of Archaean folds. Many great patches of the Palaeozoic covering, however, remain preserved on the shield itself. The exposure of the shield, the outlines of the inner margin of its Palaeozoic girdle, as well as of the superincumbent Palaeozoic patches, result to a great extent from the glacial erosion which these regions have experienced in comparatively recent times. It is to the exposed Archaean surface that we give the name of the Canadian shield. Resting upon this shield, a little outside the central region towards the east, lies the sheet of water known as Hudson bay. As we might expect from the uniform structure of the land, this large arm of the sea is of a very uniform and trifling depth, ..
