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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ber land have been inundated, and are now deeply covered with 

 drifting sand in this immediate neighborhood. -At this point is the 

 great dune known on the Coast Survey charts as Friar's Head. Its 

 top is 150 feet above tide, but it stands on the bank which is half 

 that height, so that 75 feet of that elevation is drifting sand. It 

 was originally formed many yards inland, as others are continually 



Fig. 4. Slab op Eipple-maeked Sandstone. 



forming, but, by the ceaseless wearing away of the bluffs, it is now 

 upon their brink. It is evidently of considerable age, as its wind- 

 ward slope is covered by a thick growth of beach-grass, bayberry and 

 other bushes, with stunted trees of beach and cedar quite at its top. 



From this point the weird architecture of the sand-hills is singu- 

 larly impressive. There is formed, to the southeast of Friar's Head, 

 a great semicircle of sand, between which and the dune is a floor of 

 several acres in extent swept by the winds. This floor, the original 

 surface of the drift now laid bare, is rich in the remains of an old In- 

 dian settlement. Hundreds of specimens including arrow-heads of 

 flint, jasper, and quartz, axes of various sizes, and other articles of 

 utility have been picked up. 



The sand blown from this spot and from the flanks of the dune 

 constitutes the semicircular wall spoken of. It is one-eighth of a mile 

 inland, and lies directly against a forest of oak and pine, burying 

 many of the trees to a height of thirty to forty feet, only their dead 

 and barkless tops being visible. On the surface of these sands beach- 

 grass of several kinds, and young pine-trees {Pinus rigida) maintain 



