The Testimony of Rocks. 267 



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 com- 

 pletely 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 geologists in the far distant future will be specu- 

 lating 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 a section were made of the spot 

 where this lagoon now stands, there would be found an alluvial 

 deposit on the surface, succeeded by a sedimentary stratum 

 containing fragments of the Devonian trap-rock of the neigh- 

 bourhood, accompanied by the vast assemblage of organic 

 remains just described, and followed, perhaps, by similar 

 objects at greater depths, succeeded, 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 conglomerate in which the lagoon now stands. 

 And whilst each will supply memorials of its own peculiar but 

 relatively distant epochs, none will furnish more lasting and 

 wonderful phenomena than the deposit which contains the 

 fishes destroyed during the gale of the 24th of September, 

 1867. 



Occurrences similar to that just described are apparently 

 not common, at least along the coast of the Bay of Fundy, 

 but enormous shoals of herrings and other fishes are met with 

 at stated seasons, so that the accident of the 24th of Septem- 

 ber might occur again anywhere under the same favourable 

 conditions. Moreover, it may be pretty confidently surmised 



