FORM OF NANTASKET BEACH 177 



also that West Beach is unusually high and broad, the modern beach 

 at the east alone showing the same strength of development. In 

 order that the waves should build a beach so extensive and so well 

 developed, they must either have acted on the ancient West Beach 

 shoreline for a long period of time, or must have been rapidly supplied 

 with an immense amount of material previously reduced to a condition 

 ready for beach construction. That the waves did not act for a long 

 period of time in the vicinity of the ancient West Beach shoreline is 

 shown by the absence of any considerable cliffing on the east end of 

 Skull Head drumlin and the north side of Strawberry Hill, It is 

 evident, moreover, that the large amount of material in West Beach 

 could not have been supplied by the cliffed portions of the existing 

 drumlins in that vicinity so it must have come from drumlins long 

 ago destroyed, or from the sea bottom. We believe that the most 

 probable condition which will account for all the facts is the former 

 existence of a beach or series of spits more or less completely closing 

 the space of open water between Strawberry Lost Drumlin and Aller- 

 ton Lost Drumlin, thus forming a barrier which protected Skull Head 

 drumlin and Strawberry Hill from wave action. The construction of 

 this barrier was probably facilitated by the existence of anothei 

 drumlin in the vicinity of the shallow area east of Bayside, and we 

 have called the restoration of this drumlin (Fig. 4) the Bayside Lost 

 Drumlin (BL). As will appear in the next section, the present rela- 

 tion of beaches and cliffs strongly suggests that a drumlin located in 

 the vicinity of the Bayside shallow maintained the barrier so long as 

 any part of the drumlin remained; but that with the complete 

 removal of the drumlin the barrier was broken through, the accumu- 

 lated debris swept rapidly back to the present position of West Beach, 

 still protecting the east end of Skull Head drumlin but exposing a 

 large part of the north side of Strawberry Hill to the waves which 

 formed the low cliff we observe today. 



The highly peculiar character of the clifhng on the north and 

 northeast sides of White Head drumlin can be explained only by the 

 restoration of a drumlin northeast of White Head. This we have 

 called the White Head Lost Drumlin (WL). Its precise location 

 cannot be determined, but it must have been close enough to White 

 Head to control the marked curvature of the White Head cliff and the 



