16 Geological Reports on the State of New York. 



Queens, Kings, and RicJmiond Counties. 



Peat. — This important but comparatively neglected combusti- 

 ble is abundant in the state of New York. Peat has been dug 

 near Newtown, Long Islaod, for more than fifty years, and there is 

 an extensive and probably deep peat marsh, called Cedar Swamp, 

 near Jamaica : it is supposed to contain thirty thousand cords. 



The inferior peats, including those of marine origin, make a 

 valuable manure. Many of these swamps, although covered with 

 vegetation, and it may be with moss and cranberry bushes, are 

 soft and tremulous, and admit of having a pole run into them. 



The salt marshes it appears are, in the aggregate, steadily in- 

 creasing. 



" A combination of several of the causes producing salt marshes, is 

 particularly favorable to their rapid increase ; such, for instance, as the 

 alluvion washed down by streams ; the fine materials swept from the head- 

 lands and carried into the bays and reenterings of the coast by the flood 

 tide where they are deposited ; the fine earthy matters, formed by the 

 surf grinding the pebbles on the coast, being transported by the tidal 

 currents into the bays and marshes and deposited there ; the growth and 

 decay of multitudes of marine animals ; the accumulations of marine 

 plants, drifted sea weeds, and other refuse of the ocean ; and clouds of 

 drifting sand ; all of which concur to shoal the water more or less rapidly 

 .in situations where it is protected seaward by beaches and islands." 



The salt marshes produce valuable crops of grass. 



"The salt marshes of Suffolk county are estimated to cover an area of 

 55 square miles ; of Queens county, 40 square miles ; Kings, 12 square 

 miles, and Richmond, 9 square miles; making an aggregate of 116 

 square miles, or 74,246 acres, of marsh alluvion of the south coast of 

 New York, exclusive of the extensive marshes on the south coast of 

 Westchester county, which would probably swell the aggregate to 125 

 square miles, or 80,000 acres." 



Encroachments of the sea. — The maritime parts of New York, 

 chiefly on the southern shore of Long Island, present interesting 

 examples of tidal and oceanic action, both destructive and accu- 

 mulative. Capes, headlands, and islands, are washing away, — 

 take the following example. 



" Several examples of the encroachments of the sea on the land in 

 Suffolk county were mentioned in my first report. Others equally in- 

 teresting and instructive, and as important in their bearing upon eco- 

 nomicaJ and topographical geology, occur in dueens, Kings, and Rich- 



