54 bulletin of the natural history society. 



9. — The Crayfish in New Brunswick. 



Read March 1st, 1898. 



In the sixth Bulletin of this Society there was published a short 

 paper with the above title. In the Educational Review for November, 

 1889, appeared an article, with some additional information, unsigned, 

 but known to be by the same author. In the proceedings of the United 

 States National Museum, volume XIII., p. 612, in a work by Dr. Walter 

 Faxon, the chief authority on this group, the New Brunswick localities 

 of the two preceding papers are summarized, but no new ones added. 

 Since then nothing further has appeared, nor does a paper by Dr. 

 Faxon, on the Crayfishes, now in press, contain any new data for this 

 l'egion. The subject is of sufficient interest to warrant calling the 

 attention of the Society once more to it. 



Only a single species of Crayfish is known to occur in New Bruns- 

 wick — Cambarus (Astacus) Bartonij, (Fabr.) Gir. It has been found 

 abundantly in the valley of the St. John (into which it has no doubt 

 spread from Penobscot waters), in the Restigouche, Upsalquitch, and 

 Miramichi ; but it has not been reported from the Nepisiguit, St. Croix, 

 Richibucto, Petitcodiac, nor from Nova Scotia nor Prince Edward 

 Island. As it cannot live in salt water, it probably has not spread 

 into either of the latter provinces, but it ought to occur in other New 

 Brunswick rivers, especially those connected by low, swampy portages 

 with the Penobscot or St. John. The distribution of single species in 

 relation to the influences controlling it is always of much scientific- 

 interest, and members of this Society should be on the watch for 

 additional data in this case. 



The Crayfish cannot be mistaken for any other animal. It is like 

 a miniature lobster, three to four inches long, of a dark, ashy-brown 

 color. It lives only in fresh water, and forms burrows in alluvial 

 lands. 



in texture, while the western valleys have cut across many bands of different composition 

 and hardness, producing an alternation of deeply eroded, with less eroded, stretches. The 

 filling of the former by drift would force the rivers to seek new outlets over the harder 

 ridges Practically, however, the alternating bands are too broad to have had much effect 

 of this kind, and an inspection of the geological map of Charlotte shows that there is no 

 relation between positions of the falls and the transition between formations. Fourth, post- 

 glacial changes of level, known to be going on, may have buried falls once existing at the 

 mouths of the eastern series, as they have done in the case of the St. John, off Partridge 

 Island. But against the former presence of such falls on the eastern series must speak 

 the fact that there are at present none above the mouths, as on the western series. 



