68 GEOLOGICAL AND MINERALOGICAL NOTES. 



I have also observed sunken stumps of forest trees at 

 Long beach, Nahant ; Little Nahant ; Phillips' and King's 

 beackes in Swampscott ; Marblehead beach and on the 

 northern end of West beach, Beverly ; while the beaches 

 and marshes of Ipswich, Rowley and beyond, furnish 

 similar deposits. 



In 1866 I found an area of submerged forest in the cove 

 southwest of Cape Hedge, Rockport, near the point re- 

 cently called Briar neck. The stumps, so far as could be 

 determined, were red cedar, pitch pine, maple and birch. 

 Of this Station, in his report on the geology of Cape Ann 

 (U. S. Geol. Surv., Vol. ix, p. 568), Professor Shaler 

 says : " These interesting reniains lie in a position that 

 appears to me to exclude any other hypothesis than that 

 which assumes that the surface on which they stand has 

 been lowered by a downward movement of the subjacent 

 earth." 



Specimens have been collected f rom the stumps in many 

 of the places referred to above and may be seen in the 

 Essex county geological cabinet of the museum of the 

 Peabody Academy of Science. In this connection the fol- 

 lowing extract from an article in the "Forum" (June, 

 1890, p. 448) by Prof. W. J. McGee, entitled "Encroach- 

 ments of the Sea," is of much interest. "The cautious 

 estimate of the rate at which the New Jersey coast is sink- 

 ing, made by the official geologist of that state, is two 

 feet per Century. Now the mean seaward slope of the 

 coastal piain, including its sub-aerial and submerged por- 

 tions, is perhaps six feet per mile ; so that each Century 's 

 sinking would give a third of a mile and each year a rod 

 of lowland to the ocean. This is probably the maximum 

 rate for this country." The evidence of geographic out- 

 line furnished by " drowned rivers " and half üooded and 

 outlying islands indicates that the land has either been 

 recently submerged or is now sinking. 



