natural history and physiography of new brunswick. 55 



10. — The Marine Invertebrates of the Western Part of 

 Bay Chaleur. 



Read March 1st, 1898. 



There is no part of our marine invertebrate fauna so little known 

 as that uf the western part of Bay Chaleur. The subject has been 

 studied for the Bay of Fundy by Stimpson, Verrill, and members of this 

 Society, and for Northumberland Strait by Whiteaves, and the works 

 of these investigators are well known : but for Bay Chaleur, except 

 references by Whiteaves to dredgings at its mouth, and scanty notes 

 by Bell (Canadian Naturalist, IV, 197) on Caraquette, with a single 

 reference to Dalhousie, together with a reference by Morse to the 

 occurrence of Littorina litorea at Bathurst in 1855 (Bulletin Essex 

 Institute, XII, 176), there appears to be nothing in the literature of 

 the subject. Yet the question as to what invertebrates occur in the 

 western part of that bay is of considerable interest in connection with 

 the distribution of the southern colony so remarkably developed along 

 our North Shore from Caraquet to Bay Verte, the history of which 

 may be found fully traced in the Transactions of the Royal Society 7 of 

 Canada, VIII, iv, 167-185, and by Upham in American Journal of 

 Science, XLIII, 1892, p. 203. It was therefore natural that during a 

 visit to Dalhousie and Campbellton in August, 1896, I should examine 

 the shores with some eagerness. As it was time of neap tides, I 

 could not see all of the littoral fauna, but to my surprise, what I did 

 see showed no trace of the southern species which I had expected to 

 find there. At Campbellton the Restigouche River makes the water 

 brackish and the shores muddy, conditions which result always in a 

 sparse fauna. At Dalhousie, however, the abundant species were 

 Mya arenaria, Macoma fusca, Mytilus edulis, Littorina palliata, 

 Tectura testudinalis, small crabs, a small starfish probably Asterias 

 littoralis, and many Bryozoa, etc. Littorina litorea was, however, 

 very rare, and I could not find a single specimen of Purpura lapillus. 

 Stranded on the beaches in abundance was a large medusoid jelly-fish 

 resembling Cyanea arctica, though often of a deep amethyst color. 

 Fucus vesiculosus and nodosus were abundant, the former less so than 

 the latter. In fact the general aspect of the shore forms, including 

 the dead shells cast up on the beaches, was much more like Passama- 

 quoddy Bay than like Shediac Harbor, which I visited last summer, 

 and which has the southern colony. It must be noted, however, that 

 Bell reports Crepidula fornicata, a decidedly southern form, from 

 Dalhousie, but I saw no trace of it. In general, then, these notes, 



