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DEATH OF FISHES IN THE BAY OF FUNDY. 341 
the survivors perished from the combined: fury of the waves 
and the muddy waters. During our examination of the 
bottom of the lagoon it was apparent, even in the short space 
of time that had elapsed since the gale, that many of the 
fishes had been completely covered over by mud conveyed or 
re-disturbed by every tide, and deposited also from the 
water-shed around the morass. No doubt at that rate the 
whole of the organic remains, before long, became buried in 
the soft mire, and perhaps some geologist, in the far distant 
future, will be speculating on the cause or causes which 
brought about such a vast congregation of marine and land 
animals in so limited an area, just as he now theorizes on the 
probable causes of those vast assemblages of fossil animals 
he is accustomed to observe in many rock formations. For 
we have only to suppose one or more geological epochs to 
have passed away, and a slight elevation of the land, when, if 
asection were made of the spot where this lagoon now stands, 
there would be found an alluvial deposit on the surface, suc- 
ceeded by a sedimentary stratum containing fragments of the 
Devonian trap-rock of the neighborhood, accompanied by the 
vast assemblage of organic remains just described, and fol- 
lowed, perhaps, by similar objects at greater depths, suc- 
ceeded, no doubt, by traces of the Glacial epoch, which are so 
vividly portrayed on the surface of the surrounding country 
at the present day ; and lastly, the old Devonian conglom- 
erate in which the lagoon now stands. And whilst each will 
“upply memorials of its. own peculiar but relatively distant 
epochs, none will furnish more lasting and wonderful phe- 
"omena than the deposit which contains the fishes destroyed 
urng the gale of the 24th of September, 1867. 
Ccurrences similar to that just described are apparently 
hot common, at least along the coast of the Bay of Fundy, 
“i enormous shoals of herrings and other fishes are met 
With at Stated seasons, so that the accident of the 24th of 
“ptember might occur again anywhere under the same 
favorable conditions. Moreover, it may be pretty confidently 
