TARR AND WOODWORTH: CHANGES OF LEVEL AT CAPE ANN. 193 
shelving flat south of a region of bare rock knobs. This flat ends on its 
inner margin against a boulder wall of a weak morainal appearance. 
The flat is strewn with numerous boulders, but where the sod is turned 
up water-worn stones appear. The upper inner limit of the beach flat 
according to the contoured map is about 80 feet above the present sea 
level, but aneroid readings, made at the time of my first visit and later, 
indicate a lower level of about 65 feet. 
South of this place, and retreating inland somewhat from the boulder 
line just described, is a well-formed bar with level top thrown southward 
across a slight depression extending landward between bare rocky knobs 
west of the road. The bar at its southern end is trenched by a small 
wet-weather brooklet draining the back-bay area behind the bar. The 
materials of the bar, as shown in a small pit, are rudely assorted water- 
worn cobbles, gravel, and sand closely resembling glacial stream detritus. 
This bar is slightly concave toward Whale Cove. From its crest the 
ancient beach slopes away ina graceful, saucer-shaped surface at an angle 
of about 4 degrees to a low bluff of underwater sands 32 feet high bor- 
dering Whale Cove. 
The bar is composed of water-worn gravel with occasionally larger 
stones. A section in it is exposed at the breach above mentioned. The 
elevation of the crest, so far as can be judged from the contours of the 
map, is about 90 feet, but the bar itself is not clearly indicated on 
the map with 20 feet contour intervals. Aneroid readings by my- 
self and Locke, hand-level determinations’ by Mr. Laurence La Forge, 
U.S. G. 8., gave 78 and 77 feet respectively above mean tide level. 
A few boulders occasion the outer slope from the crest of the bar down 
to the bluff on the shore of Whale ove, and much water-worn gravel 
appears everywhere at the surface in the upper part of the slope. Lower 
down over the underwater sands a rubbly layer occurs which is well ex- 
posed at the summit-line of the bluff. The finely stratified sands in this 
bluff have as yet afforded no fossils. 
Farther south weak gravel bars, stretching amid rock knobs, occur 
about the 90 foot line in the manner described by Professor Tarr near 
Turk’s Head Inn. Back of Emerson Point on the southern slope of the 
southward projecting ridge next the shore, two small spits of gravel oc- 
cur between 60 and 80 feet, according to the contours of the map. 
These occurrences, as well as the bar at Whale Cove, indicate the south- 
ward drift of the shore material. 
The evidence of strong wave action as high as 80 feet above the pres- 
ent sea level on this part of the coast of Cape Ann, considered in connec- 
