28 THE MODERN PERIOD. 



rain-marked slab of modern mud, presented to me by Dr Webster, 

 and beside it the casts of rain-drops from the showers Avhich fell 

 in Nova Scotia in the carboniferous period. I have also given 

 specimens of rill-marks and sun-cracks from the coal field of Cape 

 Breton, which arc quite similar to those to be seen at low tide 

 in the Bay of Fundy ; and farther on will be found representations 

 of worm-tracks and foot-prints of animals found on rocks of the 

 same age, and the mode of formation and preservation of which 

 is explained by these same modern deposits (Figs. 4, 5). 



A still more striking geological fact connected with the marshes, 

 is the presence beneath them of stumps of trees still rooted in 

 the soil, and other indications which prove that much if not the 

 whole of this marine alluvium rests on what once was upland 

 soil supporting forest trees ; and that, by some change of level, 

 these ancient forests have been submerged and buried under the 

 tidal deposits. To illustrate this, I may notice one of the best 

 instances of these submarine^forests with Avhich I am acquainted, 

 and which I described in the Journal of the Geological Society 

 in 1854. It occurs on the edge of the marsh near the mouth 

 of the La Blanche river, in Cumberland county, at the extremity 

 of Fort Lawrence ridge, which separates the La Blanche from 

 the Missaquash, and may be well seen in the neighbourhood of 

 a pier which has recently been erected there. 



The upland of Fort Lawrence slopes gently down toward the 

 diked marsh, on crossing which we find, outside the dike, a narrow 

 space of salt marsh thinly covered Avith coarse grass and samphire 

 {Salicornia), and at the outer edge cut away by the neap tides 

 so as to present a perpendicular step about five feet in height. 

 Below this is seen, at low tide, a sloping expanse of red mud, 

 in places cut into furrows by the tides, and in other places covered 

 with patches of soft recently deposited mud. On this slope I saw 

 impressions of rain-drops, sun-cracks, tracks of sandpipers and crows, 

 and abundance of the shells of the little Tellina Balthica* a shell 

 very common in the muddy parts of the Bay of Fundy. There 

 were also a few long straight furrows, still quite distinct in August, 

 but which, I was informed, had been ploughed by the ice in the 

 past spring. At the distance of 326 paces from the abrupt edge 

 of the marsh, and about 25 feet below the level of the highest 

 tides, which here rise in all about 40 feet, I saw the first of the 

 rooted stumps, which appear in a belt of sand, gravel, and stones 



* This shell is the T. Gromlandica of some authors, and is Psammdbia fusca of Say, 

 Sanguimlariafusea of Conrad, Macomafusea of the Smithsonian check-lists. 



