10 Life-histories of Northern Animals 



to is Sea-Side Plantain {Plantago marittma).'' To this Dr. 

 Robert Bell adds: "In the country lying immediately to the 

 south-west of Westbourne are several springs or water holes 

 which are slightly saline." 



The following extracts from Professor H. Y. Hind's 

 report" shows that this line of saliferous strata goes quite across 

 our Province: 



"Near and west of Stoney Mountain many small barren 

 areas occur, covered with a saline efflorescence; they may be 

 traced to the Assiniboine, and beyond that river in a direction 

 nearly due south to La Riviere Sale and the forty-ninth parallel. 

 These saline deposits are important, as they in all probability 

 serve, as will be shown hereafter, to denote the presence of salt- 

 bearing rocks beneath them, similar to those from which the 

 salt springs of Swan River, Manitoba Lake, and La Riviere 

 Sale issue." 



Alkaline Lakes. 



In addition to the Salt springs and numerous fresh-water 

 lakes, there are hundreds of alkaline lakes and ponds. These 

 are mere drainage basins, depending solely on evaporation for the 

 removal of their accumulated waters. They owe their alkaline 

 impregnation, not to anything of the nature of salt- bearing 

 strata, but to the continual influx and evaporation of surface 

 water, very slightly impregnated with alkali, through running 

 over the prairie soils derived from the Cretaceous marls which 

 contain alkaline salts. These "dead waters" rarely have fish in 

 them, but they are usually swarming with a species of amby- 

 stoma, besides numerous kinds of leeches, frogs, aquatic insects, 

 and larvae. They have, I believe, several peculiar sedges, and 

 are frequented by certain birds that seem to avoid fresher waters ; 

 of these the Baird sparrow and the avocet are examples. 



White-water, the relic of Lake Souris, is the largest of the 

 strongly alkaline lakes. Shoal Lake is larger but is inter- 

 mediate in character, its waters being but slightly alkaline and 



^ Assin. and Sask. Expl. Exped., 1859, p. 40. 



