52 BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



with slightly saline taste just above Plaster Rock, on the Tobique. 

 Here is a most attractive problem for our local societies — to determine 

 whether other colonies occur in these places. 



Halophytic colonies occur about the salt springs near Syracuse, 

 New York, and no doubt at other places in Eastern North America ; 

 but they appear not to have been studied from this point of view. 



8. — Upon the Manner in which the Bay of Fundy Rivers of 

 New Brunswick empty into the .Sea 



Read Dec. 7th, 1897; re-written April, 1898. 



The remarkable difference between the way in which most of the 

 rivers east of St. John and those west of it fall into the Bay of Fundy 

 must be well known to members of this Society ; but I have not seen 

 in our physiographic literature any special reference to its causes. On 

 the one hand, those of the western series — the St. Croix, the Digde- 

 guash, the Magaguadavic, New River, the Lepreau — all have falls 

 where they meet the salt water, and, at least at high tide, fall directly 

 into it from considerable heights.* On the other hand, the eastern 

 series (beginning really not at St. John, but beyond Mispec, which has 

 a fall and belongs with the western series), including the two streams 

 at Quaco, Big Salmon, Little Salmon, Quiddy, Goose, Point Wolfe, and 

 Upper Salmon rivers, and the brooks amongst them, all run evenly 

 into the sea without natural falls. At first the question as to the causes 

 of this constant difference in the two series is puzzling, but really its 

 solution is not difficult. 



We notice, first of all, that this feature of their mouths is really 

 characteristic of their entire courses. Thus those of the western series, 

 running all in comparatively open country, consist largely of long dead, 

 waters (in some cases forming large lakes), or stretches with little fall, 

 and often without ledge-rock bottoms, separated by falls over rocky 

 ledges ; and it is up one of these deadwaters of the sunken valley to 

 the next fall above that the tide in every case runs. But those of the 

 eastern series, which all run in deep, V-shaped valleys, cut down 400 

 to 600 feet below the level of an elevated plateau, have bottoms of 

 ledge rock, and run as torrents, but with no vertical falls of any 

 account, and with deadwaters or lakes only on top of the plateau. 

 The question, then, resolves itself into this — what has produced the 

 falls and deadwaters in the one case and not in the other 1 ? 



* This fact is noted by Mr. Chalmers in his Report on Surface Geology, 1890, N. 13. 



