10 



Relations of Geology to Agriculture 



in this map. A little examination, however, removes this im- 

 pression, while, at the same time, it shows how other causes 

 operate in modifying purely geological influences, what these 

 causes are, and to what extent they operate. Thus it will be 

 seen — 



1st. That only in a few places of limited extent do soils of 

 the first or second quality occur ; — therefore it is generally true 

 of the whole area, that the rocks of the coal measures produce 

 or are covered by soils of an inferior quality. 



2nd. That the poorest or most worthless portions (Nos. V. 

 and VI.) lie towards the sources of the rivers — form the higher 

 table-lands in other words, which the rains of summer and the 

 snows of winter may wash and impoverish, but which, in a state 

 of nature, receive nothing by which their natural quality can be 

 materially improved. The highest parts of these regions rarely 

 rise more than 200 or 300 feet above the sea-level, they may 

 therefore be regarded as representing in their soils a quality 

 something inferior to what the rocks themselves, by their crum- 

 bling, would naturally produce. The rains have yearly washed 

 them for an indefinite period of time, and the rivers have carried 

 off their soluble portions and their finer insoluble particles, 

 reducing them thus gradually to the condition in which they now 

 are. 



There is, besides, in this country, another cause of im- 

 poverishment to which, in a state of nature, the surface is 

 exposed, which is not undeserving of special notice. Forests 

 prevail everywhere over the unreclaimed territory, and these, in 

 the scorching days of the North American summers, are subject 

 to frequent fires. The ash of the burned forests, when it falls 

 and rests where the trees grew, excites and quickens a new vege- 

 tation, and hence the easy and luxuriant crops which the settler 

 obtains when he has strewed upon his young clearing the heaps 

 of ashes which the felled timber has yielded. But, if the fires 

 are succeeded by heavy rains, the ashes are swept off from the 

 sloping grounds, and the blackened naked surface is robbed of 

 its most fertilising constituents. Hence where frequent forest 

 burnings have taken place the land becomes notoriously worth- 

 less. The wind besides assists the rains, and, on the whole, is 

 probably a still more rapid and widely-acting exhauster of these 

 forest lands. Whenever great fires have occurred in the woods 

 of New Brunswick, and along the shores of the St. Lawrence, 

 they have almost invariably been accompanied by powerful winds. 

 The great fire which, in 1825, desolated the northern part of 

 New Brunswick, along the course of the Miramichi river, was 

 pushed on by an irresistible gale of wind, before which it gal- 

 loped across the country with a speed which carried it over a 



