422 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
Crown Land office at Fredericton.’ In the absence of a general topo- 
graphical survey of the province they have been invaluable as “tie lines” 
for checking and correlating the detached surveys from which our pro- 
vincial maps are pieced together. Unhappily, however, in no case 
have the county lines been marked by permanent monuments, but only 
by blazes on trees and by marked stakes. As a result they will in . 
time become lost either by natural decay or through forest fires, and 
once lost they can be recovered only with great difficulty.” New 
Brunswick suffers greatly in many ways from the lack of a proper 
topographical survey of the province with permanent boundary marks, 
and I believe the province would save money in the end by having such 
a survey made.’ 
SYNOPSIS OF THE COUNTY LINES oF NEw BRUNSWICK. 
The development of the county lines may be traced through the 
Acts of the ‘House of Assembly of New Brunswick. For the first 
fifty years (1786-1836), these Acts are collected into a fine quarto 
volume, invaluable for New Brunswick history, “The Acts of the 
General Assembly of Her Majesty’s Province of New Brunswick,” ete. 
(Fredericton 1838), but the later'acts are in separate volumes. 

1Tt is probable that in running these lines some difficulty was exper- 
ienced from the fact that some of them were to be run by the magnetic 
meridian of an earlier year, always difficult to determine ‘with accuracy. 
Even where the true meridian or parallel is to be used, the determination 
of the magnetic variation (which must be determined to allow such lines 
to be run) presents no little difficulty, and is a subject on which surveyors are 
apt to differ. I believe it is for such a reason that some of the lines on 
Wilkinson’s map of 1859, and on others following him, run as they do. Thus 
the north line of Westmorland is by law an east and west line, ‘but it is not 
so drawn on Wilkinson, for the reason, as I believe, that Wilkinson considered 
the surveyors who ran that line had miscalculated the magnetic variation 
and had run the line too much south of west. I have earlier referred (page 
369) to his delineation of the true east line between New Brunswick and Nova 
Scotia, which runs not true east, but south of east. Several 'other county 
lines upon this map, apparently straight, are shown by a ruler not to be so, 
no doubt for the reason above given. 
* This practical inconvenience has already been manifest in the case of 
Charlotte County. The North line was run from Point Lepreau in 183$ and 
1845, but in the settled portion between the Point and the Grand Southern 
railroad the marks had been lost and it‘recently became necessary to mark 
out the line. A surveyor employed for the purpose ran it'differently from the 
position remembered by the old residents, and another'surveyor ran it in yet 
another position. And in this condition the question remains at present. 
# Some data upon cost, etc., may be found in the Bulletins ef the Natural 
History Society of New Brunswick, XVII., 122 and XVIII., 230. 

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