12 



Relations of Geology to Agriculture 



history of the surface of New Brunswick, with the changes 

 which the river-courses have undergone, with the cause of the 

 great deepening which their channels have suffered, and with the 

 numerous other physical alterations by which the influence of the 

 streams upon the country through which they pass must have been 

 very much modified. 



It is the character of running streams, when they lose them- 

 selves in seas or lakes, or other large bodies of comparatively still 

 water, to let go and deposit near their mouths the solid matters 

 they were able, while in motion, to keep in suspension and bear 

 along with them. Now along the shores of Northumberland 

 Strait there are many indications of a later lifting up of the pro- 

 vince, by which a fringe in some places of twenty or thirty miles 

 in breadth, previously under water, was laid dry. While under 

 water, the numerous rivers which cross this coast-line would 

 meet the sea at an earlier part of their course, and all the mud 

 they brought down would be distributed along the sea-bottom, 

 and deposited by tides and currents, probably at considerable 

 distances from their actual mouths, so as to form wide patches 

 of more capable soil, as the shading (No. III.) along this coast- 

 line actually represents. The numerous terraces, rising one 

 above another, along the banks of the St. John river, are unmis- 

 takable evidence of the anciently higher levels at which its 

 waters ran. When this was the case, the surfaces numbered 

 I., II., and III., may have been subject to overflow, while the 

 waters of the Grand Lake and of the Washedamoak river may, 

 in like manner, have covered a large portion of the better land 

 by which they are now fringed round or accompanied. Thus, 

 by the aid of ancient changes of level, we may be enabled to 

 explain, in other cases as Avell as in the present, how existing 

 causes may have given rise to anomalous appearances, which 

 the operation of these causes, in present physical conditions, are 

 insufficient thoroughly to explain. 



4th. The soils Nos. I. and II., though very limited in extent, 

 point out another agency, in addition to those already noticed, by 

 which the agricultural indications of geological structure may 

 be, and no doubt are, in many cases, materially modified. In the 

 map before us, there are two spots upon which these soils occupy 

 a considerable area. The first is on the river St. John, below 

 Fredericton ; the second at the head of Cumberland Basin, one 

 of the upper branches of the Bay of Fundy. The existence of 

 soils so rich in the first of these localities is explained by the 

 circumstance that, before entering the carboniferous region, the 

 river St. John, or its tributaries, had passed through geological 

 formations of red marls, red sandstones, and Silurian slates, 

 which naturally form very fertile soils, and thence had brought 



