122 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Jan. 3, 



tide the water becomes level, and at high tide there is a fall inward ; 

 the level within not rising to that of high water without, except in 

 times of flood, when the excess of fresh water in the river supplies 

 the deficiency of tide-water. It is evident that the complete removal 

 of this obstruction would enable every tide to overflow ground now 

 covered only by the annual river-floods ; and, on the other hand, the 

 river would be daily drained out to the level of the low tide. Such 

 an obstruction would without doubt produce a change in the water- 

 level of Cumberland Basin, and might even enable trees to flourish a 

 few feet below the present high-water mark ; but it could not under 

 any circumstances enable upland-woods to grow nearly at the level 

 of low tide in a country so well supplied with streams. 



The only remaining mode of accounting for the phsenom.ena is the 

 supposition that a subsidence to the amount of about forty feet has 

 occurred in the district. Such a subsidence is not likely to have 

 been limited to Fort Lawrence Point ; and accordingly I have been 

 informed by intelligent persons, long resident in the neighbourhood, 

 that submerged stumps have been observed at a number of other 

 places, in circumstances which showed that they were in situ ; and 

 that trees and vegetable soil have been uncovered in digging ditches 

 in the marsh. Nor are these appearances limited to Cumberland 

 Basin. At the mouth of Folly River, on the southern arm of the 

 Bay, a submerged forest on an extensive scale is said to occur ; and 

 in the marshes of Cornwallis and Granville vegetable soils are found 

 under the marsh. These facts render it probable that the subsidence 

 in question has extended over the whole shores of the Bay, and that 

 the marshes have been deposited and the present lines of coast-cliff 

 cut since its occurrence. 



The marshes of the Bay of Fundy are known to have existed at 

 or about their present level for 250 years. It is true that an opinion 

 prevails in some of the marsh-districts, that the tides now rise higher 

 than formerly, and in proof it is alleged that the dykes are now 

 maintained with greater difliculty, and that tracts of marsh once 

 dyked have been abandoned. The settling of the mud and the nar- 

 rowing of the tidal channels by new embankments may, however, 

 have produced these effects. For the antiquity of these submerged 

 forests, we must therefore add to the two centuries and a half which 

 have elapsed since the European occupation of the country a suffi- 

 cient time for the deposition of the alluvium of the marshes. On the 

 other hand, the state of preservation of the wood, after making every 

 allowance for the preservative effects of the salt-mud, shows that its 

 growth and submergence must belong to the later part of the modern 

 period. 



It is a singular coincidence that this comparatively modern in- 

 stance of the submergence and burial of a forest should occur in the 

 vicinity of the Joggins cliffs, which so well exhibit the far more 

 wonderful events of a like character which occurred in the Carboni- 

 ferous Period. 



