8 



pure sand,) to prevent the neighbouring parts from 

 being overwhelmed by sand "* 



So that although material changes have taken place, 

 and are constantly taking place, and the buildings at, or 

 about Cape Henry, are threatened with being buried 

 with sand, and also the forests, yet it does not follow 

 that this change or increase is produced by the sea. 

 On the contrary, a circumstance of which Mr La 

 Trobe takes notice in the same memoir, inclines one to 

 believe that, although a material change is going on in 

 the neighbourhood of the light house at Cape Henry, 

 neither this increase or accumulation of sand, nor any 

 part of the alluvial formation, either depended on, or 

 was occasioned by the sea ; for Mr. La Trobe says, 

 the swamps, or desert, to the northward and west- 

 ward of the light house are overgrown with aquatick 

 trees, &c. such as the gum, the cypress, the red ma- 

 ple, (acerrubrum) the sycamore, (or plantanus occi- 

 dentalis) and also, " That the swamp, with its trees, 

 extended to the sea coast perhaps within a century, ig 

 very evident from this circumstance : between the 

 summit of the sand hills, and the sea shore, and more 

 especially on the Chesapeake side, the undecayed, 

 though mostly dead bodies of trees still appear in great 

 numbers. Being on the windward side of the sand 

 hills they have not been more than half buried." 



Now, if the islands, sand banks, and sand hills, on 

 the Atlantic coast, have been formed by sand washed 



* See Linn. flor. Lapp, page 62. 



