THE CLIMATE OF ACADIA IN THE EAKLIEST TIMES. 15 



Climate op Acadia in Devonian Times. 



Another aspect of our climate was now ushered in. No 

 land plants are known to have existed on the shores or in the 

 interior of this region in Cambrian times, and this would 

 lead us to suppose that the land was bare of vegetation ; but 

 a very different state of things prevailed in Devonian times, 

 for in various parts of eastern Canada remains of land plants 

 of the Devonian age have been found. Without going into 

 the minutite of the physical changes which passed over the 

 land during the whole of the Devonian age, let us note the 

 conditions of things here at a time which is supposed to have 

 been in the middle term of the Devonian. 



The border of the continent was then far off to the east- 

 ward of New Brunswick. Extensive ridges throughout east- 

 ern Nova Scotia and southern New Brunswick were covered by 

 a vegetation, almost the first land vegetation that we know 

 of. A few rare plants of greater antiquity are known. 

 Kemains of such have been found in the hills of central New 

 York and Pennsylvania, and latterly in the sandstones of 

 Wales. These are of different species from our Devonian 

 plants, but have a general resemblance to them. 



The Devonian vegetation of the Maritime Provinces of 

 Canada consisted largely of plants similar to those which 

 prevailed over extensive areas in Europe and eastern North 

 America during the coal period. They grew in extensive 

 swamps or flat low-lying tracts of land. Ferns and calamites 

 were plentiful, a proof that a moist climate prevailed. Fresh 

 water crustaceans and the larvffi of neuropterous insects are 

 found, and so we suppose there were ponds in these marshes ; 

 and further than this the insects which flew through these 

 thickets and bracken were related to the dragon-flies and the 

 may-flies, which at the present day delight in the borders of 

 marshes and streams. The beds which form the St. John 

 basin of Devonian rocks are thickest and coarsest to the east- 

 ward, and we suppose that from that direction came the river 

 which bore down into the estuary near St. John, the sandt 



