a a i ee 
1903] VEGETATION OF THE BAY OF FUNDY MARSHES 181 
One other phase of the economics of the marshes remains to 
be mentioned. They are absolutely healthful. No malaria nor 
other disease is known about them. There is a local tradition 
that men have died from drinking the bog water; but I am told 
by a local physician that cases of typhoid fever are referred to 
and that these were probably contracted in quite another way. 
The importance of the ecological study of the marsh vegetation. 
From a systematic or floristic point of view these marshes are 
of slight botanical interest. They contain no species that are 
peculiar to them, out of range, or otherwise remarkable. The 
plants of the unreclaimed marshes, and also of the bogs, are 
those ordinarily occupying such situations in this part of America, 
while the fully reclaimed marsh is but a good hay meadow, 
bearing grasses altogether like those abounding on the culti- 
vated uplands round about. Yet from another, namely, the 
ecological point of view, the marsh vegetation is replete with 
scientific interest, for the marked gradations of physical condi- 
tions of soil and water within a limited space, and, owing to 
artificial changes, within a limited time, allow usa rare chance 
to trace upon a large scale the effects of those important condi- 
tions upon the plants, and to draw some conclusions as to the 
nature of the adaptation of the one tothe other. It is necessary, 
first of all, to study carefully these, and other, physical factors 
to which the plants must respond; then we may trace the 
responses in the plants. 
The factors determining the ecological features of the marsh 
vegetation. 
The principal ecological factors, as arranged in Schimper’s 
comprehensive work, Pflanzengeographie auf physiologischer Grund- 
lage, are the following: Water, temperature, light, air, soil, animals 
‘on the Tantramar. This company is now vigorously at work, and it is hoped that 
their efforts to convert the thousands of acres of useless bog on this river into produc- 
tive marsh will be entirely successful. me 
The best account of Toler Thompson and his work that I have seen is in an 
article by Judge Botsford in the Chignecto Post in January, 1886. Another valuable 
article on the history of marsh reclamation is that by Mr. Howard Trueman in the 
St. John Sun in late December, 1897. 
