BARRIER BEACHES OF THE ATLANTIC COAST. 741 



to their constructive effect on the beaches, and it now remains to 

 consider their destructive action. 



When the wind blows from the west it carries back to the sea 

 much of the sand which the east wind had piled up in dunes, and, 

 but for the fact that the latter wind prevails, the sand-hills would 

 not long exist. By a surplus of constructive action, however, the 

 beaches are all moving to the west. Year after year sand is re- 

 moved from their eastern margin by the winter storms, and car- 

 ried north or south according to the direction of the prevailing 

 current. The winds from the ocean drive the dunes westward, 

 and, with the possible exception of Sandy Hook, all the beaches 

 are now underlaid by an old salt meadow, originally formed in 

 sheltered waters on their west side. In this turf, when exposed 

 during an unusually low tide, the footprints of cattle are seen in 

 many places, made, it is claimed, when the salt meadow was a 

 pasture and lay on the shoreward side of the beach. This west- 

 ward recession has, in many cases, amounted to more than a mile 

 within two centuries. 



On many of the beaches south of Point Pleasant the westward 

 progress of the dunes has been made over and through the native 

 forest. As a result of this, gnarled cedars, dying and dead, are 

 found among the dunes ; and in many cases stumps may be seen 

 in the sand within reach of the tide. 



Near the northern end of Seven-Mile Beach, at the time of the 

 writer's visit in 1885, an immense dune forty feet in height and 

 half a mile in length had been for many years encroaching stead- 

 ily upon the dense forest. The tree-tops here projected above the 

 summit of the ridge like the heads of drowning men above the 

 waves; while on the outer flank of the overwhelming mass of sand 

 the gnarled, skeleton trunks of those which had perished in it 

 stood bare and grim, showing with dreary grayness the fate of 

 the earlier victims of which the ragged and wave-worn stumps 

 alone remained. A more desolate scene the writer has never wit- 

 nessed. 



At Long Branch the wear of the coast has been very great. 

 According to the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, a 

 strip of land varying from three hundred to five hundred feet in 

 width was removed between Deal Beach and Monmouth during the 

 twenty-seven years preceding 1868. In the vicinity of Seabright 

 the amount of wear was a little less than two hundred feet during 

 that period. Of late years the rate of recession has been dimin- 

 ished in the neighborhood of Long Branch by the means of arti- 

 ficial protection employed, but near Seabright the shore line is 

 said to have receded at least two hundred feet during the past 

 quarter of a century. At Cape May the wear of the shore has 

 been continuous except where the land is protected by jetties or 



