466 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [DECEMBER 
evidence may have been produced by a downward movement of 
the land which entirely ceased thousands of years ago; and that 
they may be wholly unrelated to those evidences which may 
properly be designated as recent. Attacking the problem from 
this point of view, I have been unable to find a single evidence of 
recent change of level on the Atlantic coast which may not be 
reasonably explained either as a fictitious appearance of changes 
of level, or as the result of a local fluctuation in the level of high 
tide. On the other hand, I have been unable to find a single con- 
clusive proof of a change of level which is not in all probability of — 
considerable antiquity. 
The best example of deeply submerged stumps which I have 
seen on the entire coast is that so well described by DAwson” at 
the head of the Bay of Fundy. The position of these stumps 
indicates a veritable subsidence of the land, but they have been 
buried under the great thickness of silt since the embayment of 
the region, and have been brought to light again in recent time by 
a shifting of a tidal channel. The position of the more deeply 
buried portions of the salt peat under the salt marshes is most 
reasonably explained as the result of coastal subsidence; but this 
peat may well be of considerable antiquity and probably dates well 
back toward the early part of post-glacial time at least. 
In closing this account of the relation of botanical phenomena 
to the problem of recent coastal subsidence, I desire to call atten- 
tion to the application of some of the above considered principles 
to certain evidence lately presented by Barrier. According 
to this author, a peat bog at Quamquisset Harbor, near Woods 
Hole, occupies a kettle hole and represents successive layers of 
vegetation continuously built up to the surface of a ground-water 
table which rose higher and higher as the land subsided. This 
subsidence ‘required something over 2000 years, and is still in 
progress, the sea having recently cut into the bog deposit. | 
Irrespective of the question as to whether the Woods Hole 
™ Dawson, J. W., On a modern submerged forest at Fort Lawrence, Nova Scotia. 
Quar. Jour. Geol. Soc. London II:1IQ—122. 1855. 
* Bartiett, H. H., The submarine Chamaecyparis bog at Woods Hole, Massa- 
chusetts. Rhodora 11:221-235. 1909; also Botanical evidence of coastal subsidence. 
Science N.S. 33:29-31. 1911. 

