182 BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 
back into the estuaries and gradually formed bars across their mouths, 
choking up their outlets, and thus turned them into brackish water 
bodies. Their end it is easy to foretell: they will gradually become 
smaller and shallower, and at no distant day will be great marshes, each 
with a sluggish stream winding through it, and still later low flat varzeas. 
THE 
COASTAL LAKES OF 
THE STATE OF 
ALAGOAS, BRAZIL |. 
Afterthe 
Hydrographic Charts |: 
Scale: 
CLE + LII 
Ете. 69. 
On the coast between Rio de Janeiro and Cape Frio are several lakes 
shut in by the coast sands that have been thrown across the mouths of 
valleys opening toward the sea. The country immediately north of these 
lakes is а mountainous one, the land rising to elevations of from one 
thousand to fifteen hundred metres in а distance of thirty or forty kilo- 
metres. Between some of the lakes low headlands come down to the 
beach. Lagóa Maricá, for example, has such headlands at both its 
