GEOLOGY IN THE MAKIXG. 313 



in New Jersey.* The whole coast has been long sinking, and the 

 process is still going on. A curious industry is carried on in the 

 southern part of the State — the mining for cedar. Some of these 

 noble trees, exhumed from their swampy burial, exceed three feet 

 in diameter, with the timber perfectly sound. "The 'lay' of these 

 uprooted trees indicates the devastation probably of extraordinary 

 cyclones occurring at immense intervals of time, thus levelling one 

 forest upon another that had been thrown long before." The 

 cedars growing there to-day send their roots amongst their long- 

 buried ancestors. The rings upon some of the exhumed trees 

 show a growth of 1,500 or possibly 2,000 years, and the " exist- 

 ence of at least two buried forests beneath the present growth is 

 indisputable." 



Dr. Lockwood, from whom I quote, says that on the south side 

 of Raritan Bay is a clay bluff, which in his own recollection has 

 lost much of its height. Standing on this bluff at times of very 

 low tide, he has seen in the distance stumps of trees in the same 

 position in which they were left by the woodman's axe when he 

 cut down the forest which grew on that bluff when it reached much 

 further seaward than now. Nearer the shore could be seen a 

 great number of broken bricks and a well-curb, the remains of a 

 brick-yard, which, like the ancient bluff, had also gone to sea. 



Dr. Lockwood, during a residence of many years at Keyport, 

 not more than two miles from the bluff in question, had cherished 

 a little grove of native saplings — scrub oaks, pines, persimmons, 

 and gum-trees. Gradually these formed a dense covert, in which 

 a number of singing-birds found shelter. But one summer even- 

 ing a new visitor appeared whose delightful medley of song reduced 

 all the other bird vocalists to silence. It was a mocking-bird 

 i^Minius polyglottiis)^ in former days common in the woods of New 

 Jersey, but even forty years ago scarce, and now most rarely seen. 

 The luxuriant forests in which it delighted have been felled, and 

 with them the mocking-birds' food and shelter. But this incident 

 made Dr. Lockwood think of " interviewing " one of the oldest 

 inhabitants of the district, a man born in the last century. All his 

 life, he said, he had lived in these parts, and of late years he had 

 heard no mocking-birds, but " plenty of 'em when I was a lad. 



*Why the mocking-birds left New Jersey.— .-/w^r. Nat. (Aug., 1892). 



