NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK. 19 
inner margin and in other features, this island bears a very 
striking resemblance to Grande Plaine, Miscou, which I have 
already fully described (Note 97, and especially the Botanical 
Gazette, XUI, 1906, 81). This resemblance, I believe, is not 
accidental but genetic; all the facts seem to me to indicate that 
Portage Island, like Grande Plaine, was formed against neigh- 
boring upland, of which, perhaps, the Horse-shoe Shoal represents 
a part, and which the increasing subsidence of the land has 
submerged below the surface of the lagoon. The reason why 
the north end of the island is now being washed away is plain; 
the headland north of it, at Blaeklands, which would naturally 
protect it, as will be more fully considered in the following note, 
is composed only of soft peat which is rapidly being removed 
by the waves. 
While Portage Island thus resembles Grande Plaine very 
closely in general physical features, albeit with its beach pheno- 
mena upon a markedly larger scale, there are some notable 
differences in the vegetation. Thus, while the woods of Grande 
Plaine are of mixed formation, with white spruce as the dominant 
tree and the one which leads into the open, the pines being nearly 
or quite wanting, here at Portage Island the old woods are mainly 
coniferous, composed largely of Prince’s Pine, with White Spruce 
and some White and Red Pine. Further, the woods advancing 
upon the open ground are preceded by dense copses of White 
Birch, (with some intermingled Aspen) a tree not found in this 
situation at Grande Plaine, where its place is taken, but only 
in small part, by dwarf Poplars. Further, the characteristic 
and attractive grassy swales of Grande Plaine are here quite 
wanting, their place being occupied by thickets of Sweet Gale, 
Spiraea and Roses, while *a still more remarkable and unexplained 
lack is the creeping Juniper so abundant at Grande Plaine. 
Certainly we have, in the striking differences of vegetation in 
these two physically-similar and floristically-contiguous places, 
an attractive problem for the ecologist. As at Grande Plaine, 
the oldest woods are perfectly closed or dense, and the newer 
beaches are perfectly treeless, while the intermediate areas show 
open park-like glades and vistas, interspersed among lines and 
