PHD Ou10o State ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
are fragments of wrecks, and other driftwood, articles of various 
sorts thrown or lost from boats, coal, cinders, nuts, fish, bones 
of various vertebrates and shells of molluscs. We once found 
on a lonely part of the beach the skeleton of a swan which 
probably after being wounded perished on the lake and was 
entombed in the sand near the crest of the beach by the same 
storm that brought it ashore. Even the cartilages of the trachea 
with its curious convolution inside the sternum were still pre- 
served. Various things through long attrition by sand and 
pebbles have come to resemble the latter so closely that their 
nature is a puzzle to the novice—wood, coal, peat, brick, drain- 
age tile, pottery and glass made opaque and quite free from 
sharp points or edges. The source of the last when its nature is 
comprehended may not be so puzzling to account for as that of 
the peat which occurs at various places along the lake shore to 
the very end of Cedar Point. This is derived from the remains 
of marsh vegetation which once flourished where the lake is now. 
The bar is not so far out as formerly and part of the marsh that 
was originally behind it is now in front of it. These fragments 
are perhaps broken loose in winter, when the water is low and 
the ice that has been resting upon the exposed marsh, sometimes 
in winrows ten or fifteen feet high, is drifted ashore by the wind. 
At least I found many large and angular ones nearly free from 
sand after the ice had broken up Jan. 1, 1905. Some of them 
were fifteen inches thick and more than four feet in length. A 
long line of these extended northwest from a point about 2% 
miles from Rye Beach. Toward Rye Beach for quite a distance 
none were noticed though within a mile or so of it there were a 
dozen or more, increasing in size toward the beach, the largest 
eighteen inches long. There are never large ones on this part 
of the beach. The small ones are derived from the marsh at the 
outlet of Sawmill Creek close to Rye Beach. The portion of this 
marsh now covered by the lake bristles with the roots of button- 
bush so close together that no large masses of muck are loosened 
from among them. A third locality from which the muck is 
derived is probably along the shore of the Carrying Ground. 
Between the buried valleys of Plum Brook and Sawmill 
Creek the clay is probably so near the surface that soon after the 
marsh muck was uncovered by the lake moving the bar over 
onto the marsh, it was torn loose and perhaps ground to pieces 
by the waves but I cannot say but what some still remains where 
it was formed and now covered by the sand and water of the lake. 
Allen Remington and Jacob Lay have seen large quantities 
of peat cast ashore by storms occurring when there was no ice. 
The former says the storms accompanying the high water of 
