264 Field and Forest Rambles. 



Before referring to the next series of rocks overlying the 

 Old Red Sandstone, I may diverge for a short time from the 

 immediate consideration of the strata, to that referring to their 

 fossil remains. It is well known that in this and the overlying 

 coal formations, — for instance, in the coal measures of the 

 Joggins in Nova Scotia, and elsewhere in the Old World, — vast 

 accumulations of fossil remains, to wit, fishes, etc., indicate 

 a wholesale destruction of animal life, suggesting questions of 

 how such phenomena might have been brought about. To 

 the philosophic mind they might indicate oscillations in the 

 relative positions of land and sea, and no doubt such may 

 have occasionally been the case ; but a far simpler explanation 

 is also feasible, as is shown by the following occurrence, of 

 which I was an eye-witness. 



In the Bay of Fundy, opposite the island of Grand Manan, 

 there is the large gap in the coast-line made by Passama- 

 quoddy Bay, into which several fair-sized rivers drain. One, 

 the Magagudavic, before mentioned, is reached by means of a 

 long fiord of several miles in length. At a short distance west- 

 ward, there is a small creek named Anderson's Cove, formed 

 in the trappean rocks of which the coast line is composed. 

 These beds are considered by geologists as belonging to the 

 Devonian or Old Red Sandstone formations of southern New 

 Brunswick. Anderson's Cove is, in fact, the sea-ending of a 

 ravine down which runs a small stream into a very muddy 

 lagoon of upwards of 1,300 feet in circumference. The latter 

 is oval in shape, and communicates directly at high tide with 

 Anderson's Cove by means of a narrow and rocky channel, 

 filled with masses of amygdaloid trap, fragments of which are 

 mixed with the mud forming at the bottom of the lagoon. 

 There is a beach of sand in front of the lagoon, besides a 

 sea-wall formed of sand and masses of rocks and stranded 

 logs of wood piled in disorder along the shore ; so that, 

 excepting during furious gales, the only direct communication 



