Section IV., 1899. [ 141 ] Trans. R. S. G. 



V. — Fresh water Fishes and Batrachia of the Peninsula of Gaspé, P.Q., and 

 their distribution in the Maritime Provinces of Canada. 



By Philip Cox, Ph. \). 



(Presented by Prof. J. Macoun, and read May 26th, 1899. 



A glance at the map will suggest many reasons, and reflection on 

 its geological history even more, for including the Quebec slope at least 

 of the Baie des Chaleurs with New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, 

 and much of Nova Scotia in one maritime biological province, the 

 unity of which is marked not so much by the occurrence of peculiar 

 forms, as by the general similarity of the flora and fauna. Portions of 

 this region, it is true, differ much in the extremes of heat and cold, 

 snow-fall, length of winter and other physical aspects, but the average 

 annual temperature is nearly the same throughout ; and hence the 

 adaptive power of most plants and lower vertebrates, found anywhere 

 within it, enables them to spread over and occupy the whole of the 

 province. But while the means plants make use of for their dispersal 

 are various, and effective enough to account for their presence here and 

 there, and while batrachia possess ample powers for the same purpose, 

 it is altogether different in the case of fresh-water fishes, the study of 

 whose distribution often presents problems not to be solved by a know- 

 ledge of their life-history nor existing physical conditions. Especially 

 is this the ease with regard to rare species, occurring at remotely iso- 

 lated stations over an immense area. Forced by the logic of facts to 

 reject the usual theory, and recognizing the great antiquity of the fish, 

 the student in ichthyology prefers to find an explanation of these phen- 

 omena in the evidence of a different relation of the land and water 

 surfaces to each other at different epochs in the world's history. In 

 this view isolated colonies are regarded as the remnants of an ancient 

 and widely distributed race, which, in favourable environments, have 

 here and there survived the great changes that elsewhere engulfed their 

 kind. A few interesting examples of this nature are met with in Gaspé 

 and on the Bay of Fundy coast, and will be discussed at length in their 

 proper place. 



Though the average annual temperature of all parts of the coast 

 region of this biological province may be nearly the same, yet the sum- 

 mer, and probably also the winter, temperature of the Gaspé rivers is 

 much lower than what obtains in the rivers of New Brunswick and 

 Nova Scotia, due to the former rising in the Notre Dame Mountains, 



Sec. IV., 1899. 9a. 



