l88 D. W. JOHNSON AND W. G. REED, JR. 



similarity between the oldest and latest beaches in the Nantasket 

 area proves that the sea stood at about the same height when the two 

 were formed. The intervening beaches are often low, because of the 

 rapidity with which the shoreline was prograded for a time; but 

 County Road Beach is strong and high, and may be compared with 

 West Beach and the recent beaches. 



The duration of this still-stand of the land may be roughly cal- 

 culated. Judging from old maps, there has been no marked change 

 in the width of Nantasket Beach during the last two hundred years. 

 Judging from the rate of cHff cutting in various drumlins in the 

 vicinity of Boston as determined by surveys extending o\'er forty 

 years or more, the length of time required for the removal of those 

 portions of drumlins which have disappeared since the early cliffing 

 of Strawberry Hill and Whitehead and the formation of West Beach, 

 with liberal allowance for relatively rapid cutting of drumlins well 

 exposed to the sea, could scarcely have been less than one thousand 

 years, and was probably two or three thousand years. We conclude, 

 therefore, that there have been no marked changes in the relative 

 position of land and sea in the Nantasket area during the last thousand 

 years at least. 



CONCLUSION 



The form of Nantasket Beach presents a variety of complicated 

 phenomena which, when carefully studied, enable us to reconstruct 

 with reasonable certainty the history of the development of the beach. 

 It appears that the present form of the beach is not due to the acci- 

 dental tying-together of a few islands without system, but represents 

 one stage in a long series of evolutionary changes which have occurred 

 in orderly sequence and in accordance with definite physiographic 

 laws. Perhaps nowhere in the world can features of beach develop- 

 ment be better studied than in the area here under investigation. 

 Certainly nowhere in the literature is recorded an example of so com- 

 plicated a shoreline preserving the records of its past development 

 with such fidelity. 



REFERENCES 



City of Boston. List of Maps. Appendix I. Ann. Rep. City Eng. igo2, Sup- 

 plement; ihid., 1903. 



