388 GEOLOOT AND MINEBA.LOOT. 



in the southern part of the State, my attention was frequently cnlled to the rapid 

 wearing away of the shores, and to the advance of the tide-waters on the land. 

 Local causes were in general assigned for the increased height of the tides; but 

 this and other phenomena were extended over so long a line of shore, that it was 

 thought there must be some general cause for them ; and this cause appears to be, 

 the slow but continued settling or subsidence of the land. At the mouth of Dennis 

 Creek, in Cape May county, and for several miles along the bay shore, on each side 

 of it, according to the local surveyors, the marsh wears away, on an averaze, about 

 one rod in two years ; and from the early maps, it would appear to have been going 

 on at that rate ever since the first settlement of the country. A map of Cape May 

 in the possession of Dr. Maurice Beasley of Dennisville, and bearing the date of 

 1694, lays down Egg Island, the western point of Maurice River Cove, as contain- 

 ing three hundred acres; at low water it now contains a half or three-fourths of 

 an acre, and at high water it is entirely covered. * * * That the tides 

 rise higher upon the uplands than formerly, is the opinion of the oldest observers, 

 upon the Atlantic and Bay Shores, from Great Egg Harbor quite round to Salem 

 Creek. Their opinion is founded on the fact that on the low uplands, or those coming 

 down to the salt marsh with a gentle slope, the salt grass now grows where upland 

 grass formerly grew ; and where the land was in wood, narrow fringes of it next 

 the marsh are frequently killed by the salt water, and marsh takes its place. * * 

 In all the salt marshes on the sea shore of southern New Jersey, and also in the 

 salt and fre=h tide marshes on Delaware Bay and River, stumps of trees, of the 

 common species of the country, arc found with their roots still fast in the solid 

 ground at the bottom of the marsh, and this at depths far below low-water mark. 

 The fact is known to every one living in the neighborhood of these marshes, and 

 the evidence of it can be seen in the bottoms or in the banks of every ditch that 

 is cut in them." Our space will not admit of further extracts, but the entire Report 

 will well repay perusal. A subsidence of the land appears to have taken place, 

 within comparatively modern periods, if it be not still going on, along the greater 

 portion of the Atlantic coast of the Union, as well as in Nova Scotia and New- 

 foundland. Instances of submarine forests on the shores of Nova Scotia are cited 

 with full details, in Professor Dawson's work on " Acadian Geology," reviewed in 

 a late number of the Journal. 



GRAPTOLITES. 



The subjoined tabular distribution (with accompanying figures) of the more 

 common forms of American graptolites, may not be unacceptable to some of the 

 readers of the Canadian Journal. For the benefit of the general reader, it may 

 be briefly stated, that the graptolites — confined entirely to the earliest fossiliferous 

 periods of geological history — belonged, in all probability, to the Bryoza: a group 

 of delicate compound, or coral-like form*, ranging at the base of the Molluscous 

 types.* The Bryoza secrete a horny or semi-calcareous framework or common 



* The writer lias placed in the collection of the Canadian Institute several specimens of 

 modern Bryoza (or of their skeletons rather), obtained by him on the S »u1 □.•eastern coast of 

 England. Some of these have the most striking- i to graptolite forms. At the 



same time, a palajontologieal law, of very general application, would appear to oppose itself 

 to the idea of even a generic relationship. This Ian assumes, that after a type has once ap- 

 peared, it continues through all the intervening periods up to tin' date of its I'mal extinction. 

 The graptolites are altogether unknown above the lower or middle part of the Upper Silu- 

 rians. 



