VIL—THeE GeoLocicaL HIstorRY OF THE GASPEREAU VALLEY, 
Nova Scorts.—By Proressor Ernest Haycock, Acadia 
College, Wolfville, N. S. 
{(Received for publication 18th Dec., 1901.) 
A line drawn across the eastern portion of King’s County 
from the Bay of Fundy to the southeast county line, a distance 
of about eighteen miles in a southeasterly direction, will cross 
three distinct bands of country which, with slight local variations, 
run parallel with the coast and represent the soil and surface of 
that part of Nova Scotia bordering this bay on the southeast and 
draining into its waters. 
From the shore the surface of .the land rises for about four 
miles in gentle undulating slopes to the crest of the ridge, which 
marks the boundary of this northernmost band. At short 
intervals the brooks have cut deep trenches at right angles to 
the coastline, and these, from their steep sides and generally 
abrupt character, are locally known as vaults Thus the surface, 
though sloping but gently seaward, is very uneven and the 
drainage good. The soil is dark grey, thin and stony, scarcely 
concealing, in many places, the underlying rock, and largely made 
up of its more resistant constituents. Where not boggy the land 
is thus subject to drouth, and adapted to pasturage rather than 
to tillage. 
The underlying rock is an ancient lava-flow, or a mass formed 
by successive lava-flows, and the peculiar features of the soil and 
surface are the natural results of the chemical and mechanical 
~ action of subaerial forces upon its gently sloping sheets. 
From the crest of the ridge the surface drops suddenly away 
to an undulating plain but little above sea-level, about seven 
miles wide, made up of alternate strips of level marsh and 
smoothed and rounded ridges. When one leaves behind the 
rough roads, lined with the rail fences of stony pasture and 
hay lands or flanked by steep slopes with their scanty covering 
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