260 American Jlssociation. 



tide still firmly rooted in the hard a;round. In the bank of Allo- 

 way's Creek, a few miles below, the remains of trees can be seen 

 under the same circumstances. They are also common in all the 

 marshes of Cumberland County, and great numbers of them can 

 be seen in the marshes on Maine Kiver, at Dorchester and below. 

 In Cape May County they are seen everywhere in the marshes 

 and the creeks, on the Delaware Bay ; on the inside of Seven Mile 

 Beach, on the sea side ; and below Luckahoe, on Great Egg Har- 

 bour. In the marsh on the Earitan, above South Amboy, hun- 

 dreds of them were dug out in cutting a canal across a bend in 

 South Eiver. The marshes on Staten Island also contain buried 

 timber ; and on Long Island, at Hempstead, at Babylon, and still 

 further east, the same fact is of constant occurrence. At several 

 places in Southern New Jersey an enormous quantity of white 

 cedar timber is found buried in the salt marshes — sound and fit 

 for use, and a considerable business is carried on in mining this 

 timber and splitting it into shingles for market. At Dennisville 

 there is a large tract of marsh underlaid by cedar swamp, earth 

 and timber. By probing the marsh with an iron rod, the workmen 

 find where the solid timber lies, and then removing the surface sods 

 and roots, tbey manage to work in the mud and water with long 

 one-handed saws and cut off the logs, which then rise and float, as 

 the timber is not water-logged at all, but retains its buoyancy, and 

 the removal of that nearest the surface releases that which is be- 

 low and it rises in turn, so that a new supply is constantly coming 

 up to the workmen. In this way a single piece of swamp which 

 is below tide-level has been worked for fifty years past, and still 

 gives profitable returns. 



Prof. Cook here referred at considerable length to the opi- 

 nions of various parties who had been making similar examina- 

 tions to those detailed, showing by reference to a map the 

 various positions in which they had been made, and also quoted 

 several authorities as to the fact of land having been submerged 

 within a recent period. The owner of an extensive tract of land, 

 between Maurice River and West Creek, informed him that with- 

 in the last fifty years he had lost 1,000 acres of timber by the 

 tides running higher on the upland than they formerly did. On 

 West Creek he was shown portions of upland on which good crops 

 of wheat had been raised, within thirty years, which was now li- 

 able to be overrun by the tides. The same farm has, within the 

 the last fifty years, lost 50 acres — part wood and part cultivated 



