376 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [Aug., 



closing the mouths of both rivers, which united together into a common 

 stream, cutting its way past the Navesink Highlands and emptying into 

 Sandy Hook Bay. Even to-day the low sand beach is so narrow that 

 often the sea breaks entirely over it, and this is particularly true of 

 the portion immediately in front of the Navesink Highlands, for here 

 it is barely wide enough to accommodate double railroad tracks and a 

 carriage road, protected as they are from the full force of the ocean 

 storms and high tides by a sea wall of stone and piling. This narrow 

 strip of sand, about six miles long, connects Sandy Hook with the 

 mainland. All of the smaller streams have been obliged to meet the 

 same sand encroachment; but many of them, unable to keep their 

 outlets open, have been converted into salt ponds, and if shut off 

 from the sea for any length of time they have been gradually trans- 

 formed into fresh water ponds. Only two of the larger rivers have 

 been equal to the task of cutting through the barrier beach, viz., 

 Shark River and Manasquan River. The outlet of Shark River several 

 years ago had been almost closed, except a narrow channel which one 

 could step across at low tide; but in the summer of 1908 the river 

 had a new lease of life, its inlet opened wider than ever, so that naphtha 

 launches drawing several feet of water entered from the open ocean. 

 During the summer of 1909, however, the sand barrier had traveled so 

 far north that a southeast storm on July 23, 1909, completely closed 

 the inlet. 5 



We can arrange the inlets and ponds in a regular sequence, with 

 reference to the stage which they have reached in their developmental 

 history (see note 16), beginning as ocean inlets and ending in closed fresh 

 water ponds. In an earlier paragraph I have arranged all the known 

 bodies of water in geographic order. Their physiographic sequence is 

 somewhat as follows: 



1. Salt Water 6 (Active Tidal Flow). 



Manasquan River; Shark River (open until July 23, 1909, when 

 it closed, to be opened by digging away the bar on August 13, 

 1909) ; Navesink and Shrewsbury Rivers ; Wreck Pond (open and 

 salt in 1908, closed by a sand bar and fresh during 1909 until 

 August 13, when the inlet was opened to the sea). 



5 The only open inlet from Barnegat Inlet to Sandy Hook during the summer 

 of 1909 after July 23, when Shark River Inlet closed, was at Manasquan. Later, 

 on August 13, 1909, Wreck Pond Inlet was opened, and on August 12 that of 

 Shark River. 



6 In all cases the character of the water was determined by a hydrometer that, 

 read 0-50 degrees Beaume. When the scale read degrees the water was 

 considered undoubtedly fresh. 



