100 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [jAN. 18, 



station, but the house was digged up recently to recover the 

 stone. Loose sand reaches to 66 feet above tide at Tuckertown 

 bay. Its advance is hampered by several plants, especially 

 Ipomsea pes capt-se, the bayvine; Cocoloha umfera^ihe seaside 

 grape ; Tournefortia gnaphaloides, the bay lavender ; which take 

 root readily and grow rapidl3\ These prepare the way for 

 juniper and oleander; mosses take hold quickly within sheltered 

 spaces and they in turn appear to give way to the coarse Ber- 

 muda grass. 



The conditions in Paget parish from near Crow Lane bay to 

 beyond Elbow baj^ are ver^^ much like those at Tuckertown, but 

 the bare spaces are greater. The sand has been carried at the 

 northeasterly end to fully one hundred and fifty feet above tide, 

 and for a long distance it extends inland at least a third of a 

 mile. The movement in much of this space has been checked 

 materiall}^ within the last ten years. The chimney of the buried 

 house observed by Thompson twenty years ago, is barely 18 

 inches deeper in the sand than when photographed for him, and 

 the northerly edge of the dune has advanced only a few feet 

 further into the yard referred to by him. A new house, erected 

 a few years ago at several rods higher up on the dune, shows 

 very slight accumulation about it. Here, as at Tuckertown, the 

 plants are gaining rapidly upon the sand, and oleander, as well 

 as juniper, is seen in dense groves. Toward Elbow bay, how- 

 ever, the condition is different ; the altitude is much less and a 

 broad expanse of almost naked sands is seen, where plants have 

 not gained control. It is said that this portion was wholly bare 

 twenty years ago, but the plant invasion is positive now ; clumps 

 of juniper and the long runners of ipomaea are soon to covei' 

 the space, preparing the wa}^ for its conversion into tillable land. 

 Mr. J. Mathew Jones* states that a portion of this area is al- 

 ready consolidated, but the writer was unable to find the localit3^ 

 There is evident tendency to consolidation in the excavation on 

 the Tuckertown dune, but the exposure is insignificant. 



The sand is similar in composition at both localities, but it is 

 coarser at Tuckertown, where many small fragments of shells 

 were seen with some hellices and occasional fragments of nulli- 

 pores and millepores. The latter must be carried l\v the wind 

 with greater ease than are shell fragments, as, in spite of their 

 greater brittleness, they occur of larger size. No examples of the 

 large Livona pica were found on the upper portions of the 

 dunes, though they have been reported by other geologists. The 

 absence of large pieces of shell or even of large shells themselves 

 is not due to any lack of force in the winds or waves, but to the 



*Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus., No. 25, p. XX. 



