432 
Canadian Agriculture. 
valley, and around the Basin of Minas, possessing remarkable 
fertility. 
This fertility, however, is not entirely of local origin, for 
much of the soil along the Bay of Fundy consists of rich marine 
alluvium. The configuration of this bay is such that it presents 
southwards to the open ocean two coast-lines, those of Xova 
Scotia and the mainland, receding from each other at an acute 
angle, consequently when the north-flowing tidal wave enters 
the bay it finds its lateral extension gradually contracted and so 
its waters get piled up. " VV here the undulation meets with 
the resistance of converging masses of land and a shallowing 
bottom, it is heaped up, sometimes, as in the Bay of Fundy, to 
a height of seventy feet, and rushes along as a great wave or as 
a surging and foaming ocean-river." * Farmers along the lower 
reaches of the Severn valley in Gloucestershire will be familiar 
with a similar phenomenon, which there, however, only occurs 
with the high spring-tides, and produces the " bore." The 
tides of the Bay of Fundy spread themselves out over the 
adjacent coast-lands and have there deposited marsh soils of 
inexhaustible richness. In some of these saline swamps marsh- 
grass grows abundantly and yields a heavy crop. But large 
areas of the salt marshes have been reclaimed by means of mud 
dykes, so built as to prevent the irruption of the tidal water, and 
it is these d\ke-lands which constitute so interesting and so 
peculiar a feature in Xova Scotia, along the Bay of Fundy, 
around the Basin of Minas, and on the adjacent shores of New 
Brunswick. The earthen dykes are strong and broad, six to 
eight feet high, and the land within them is firm and dry, and 
produces a great abundance of coarse but nutritious herbage. 
Some of this, which I examined on the salt marshes near Lon- 
donderry, I found to consist of cord-grass, Spartina gracilis, 
couch grass, 2Vitictim repens, and one or two species of^ legu- 
minous herbage. Year after year will these reclaimed marsh- 
lands give upwards of two tons of hav per acre and show no 
signs of running out, though they may become weedy. Should 
this happen, it is the practice to plough up portions at a time, 
at intervals of ten years or so, and to take a crop of wheat or 
oats, with which new grass seeds are sown. The salt hay, as 
it is termed, costs about \l. per acre to make, and is worth from 
hi. to G/. per ton in the market. Most of the upland farms 
have some of these useful bottom dyke lands attached, and it is 
estimated that the latter extend over an area of some 70,000 
acres. The cost of reclaiming and dyking these salt marshes 
varies Ijetween 1/. 10*. and 4/. per acre. The system of culti- 
• Archibald Geikie, ' IMiys. Geogr.,' p. 152. 
