in North' Eastern America. 



13 



with them materials of productiveness which were foreign to this 

 region. These were naturally deposited where the river first 

 widened into a shallow lake, and gave birth to the fertile 

 alluvium of which the first and second class soils on the St, John 

 river in a great measure consist. In the second locality, on the 

 head waters of the Bay of Fundy, the lofty tides of that Bay, 

 thick with red mud — the spoils of the soft rocks which they 

 wear down in their daily ebb and flow — have, like the waters of 

 the St. John, brought upwards the materials of other formations, 

 and have overlaid with most fertile soil the more barren surface 

 natural to the rocks on which they rest. It is a natural warping 

 with foreign materials — similar to that performed by our own 

 Humber and Trent on the adjoining moor-lands, or by the river 

 Ombrone upon the Tuscan Maremma — that the existence of these 

 first-class soils in this portion of New Brunswick, are for the 

 most part to be ascribed. 



It is unnecessary, I think, to follow this subject at present 

 into further detail ; I shall therefore briefly s^um up the results 

 to which the study of this case has led us in regard to the re- 

 lations of Geology with Agriculture, and to the causes by which 

 these relations, naturally close, may be materially modified. 

 These results are — 



1st. That the actual agricultural value of the soil in a dis- 

 trict may differ very much from that which pure geology 

 alone would indicate. This is shown by the map before us, in 

 which, although the soils special to the formation do predomi- 

 nate, yet soils of all qualities are seen extending often over very 

 large areas. 



2nd. That the physical structure of a country has much in- 

 fluence in causing the production of such diversities of soil upon, 

 or from, the debris of rocks of the same age and kind. 



3rd. That the existence of flat table-lands, for example, or of 

 depressions having no natural outlet, will cover extensive portions 

 of such a surface with swamps and bogs, in climates which 

 favour the accumulation of vegetable matter. Thus, as in Ireland 

 not less extensively than in New Brunswick, the economico- 

 agricultural influence of geological structure may be disguised 

 or wholly hidden by the purely superficial covering of decaying 

 vegetable matter. 



4th. That, generally speaking, the soil of a district of uniform 

 geological character will improve in the direction of the natural 

 drainage and river outfalls. Where rains fall or snows melt, it is 

 the tendency of the flowing water to enrich the lower at the ex- 

 pense of the higher country, and thus to establish differences 

 of soil which did not originally exist. At the same time the 

 final result of such action will depend very much upon the nature 



