6 BEACH GRASS 



A great plane of wind-swept sand awaits the 

 growth of beach grass and the building up of 

 dunes, but may succumb to the waves before this 

 occurs. Again the swing of the shore line beyond 

 this plane has cut into the older dune-covered 

 beaches and has revealed in section timbers of old 

 wrecks, once on the shore, and the remains of a 

 fisherman's dory long buried by the sand. Be- 

 yond this the beach line is nearly straight, for the 

 outlying Ipswich bar comes to an end, the swing 

 of the river no longer exerts itself, its mean- 

 ders have ceased and it has escaped to sea. It 

 is dangerous to interfere with the course of a 

 river. The consequences are far reaching. 



Although many bushes and trees are over- 

 whelmed by the sand every year, the total 

 amount of vegetation in the Ipswich dunes, de- 

 scribed in the former volume, appears to be in- 

 creasing. In the last ten years the groves of 

 pitch pines have augmented very much in area, 

 extending towards the south whither the pine 

 seeds are carried by the strong northerly winds. 

 Many of the cranberry bogs — natural ones, not 

 man-made — have grown up to bushes, and here 



