[GANONG ] BOUNDARIES OF NEW BRUNSWICK 149 
that proposals which have been made, and will later be discussed, to 
rearrange the counties to make rivers the boundaries, have failed. And 
the same principles apply in still greater degree to Parish lines. 
Property Boundaries, while of every degree of importance, from 
those including huge grants, such as Townships, down to the smallest 
lot, are as a rule small and hence of the artificial sort, compass lines. 
Moreover, while the other classes of boundaries are likely to be fairly 
permanent, these are continually changing, and they would have but 
little importance in our present discussion were it not for the fact that 
these property boundaries often become, or at least determine the posi- 
tion of, parish and even county lines. Thus in New Brunswick, the 
great township grants of the English Period determined the position 
not only of several of our present most important parish lines, but also 
at least one of our county lines (the York-Sunbury line), while nearly 
every one of our present parish lines has its position determined by the 
lines of property grants. It is thus in some measure true that property 
lines are potential parish lines, which are potential county lines, and 
this promotion of lines from a lower class to a higher has happened 
several times in New Brunswick, as will be traced in Section V. 
There are of course various boundaries of a temporary character, 
such as those separating mining, hunting or lumbering areas, but these 
hardly have any connection with our present subject. 
In summary we observe that, in general, the larger and older a 
division is, the more likely it is to have natural boundaries ; while the 
smaller and newer it is, the more likely it is to have compass-line 
boundaries. This is essentially true for New Brunswick. 
EK. THE PHyYsI0oGRAPHIC Basis FoR NATURAL BOUNDARIES IN 
New BRUNSWICK. 
In the foregoing sections it has been noted that the boundaries of a 
country are powerfully affected by its physical characteristics. At the 
one extreme a featureless prairie, particularly in a new country, is best 
bounded by straight compass lines based on meridians and latitude par- 
allels and marked by monuments. On the other a country of marked 
physical features, broken into fiords and rising to mountains, will, par- 
ticularly if an old country, use those features as its boundaries. Phy- 
sically, and as to age, New Brunswick is intermediate, but nearer the 
flatter and newer than to the rougher and older condition. 
Of the boundaries of the entire Province, the southern and eastern 
and part of the northern are formed by the sea, and wherever the sea 
extends it forms a boundary, the most natural and the best, for these 
