MEMORIAL OF CHARLES A. DAVIS 33 



ing all the facts is well expressed in this letter, as well as the nursing of 

 his wife, which was an important part of his life. 



"Washington, Octoher 24, 1910. 



"You will probably be surprised to get a letter from me at home after what 

 I wrote you from Kittery. Scarcely had I written my last letter, however, 

 when Mrs. Davis took a turn upward physically and the doctor said she could 

 be taken home, especially as she was very homesick. 



"To tell the truth, I had been acting as nurse so continuously that I was 

 pretty well played out at that time. 



"Regarding the matter of the obser^ ations on the vegetation affected by the 

 breaking of the barrier beach down on the Cape, once more, while I can see 

 that occasionally the cause which produced the conditions we observed there 

 may be operative, I can not see how they are likely to be of general occurrence. 

 Moreover, I do not see any way in which we can account for submergence of 

 tree stumps in places to a depth of 9, 10, or even 12 feet by such a cause, and 

 certainly I am unable to account for the homogeneous structure of the salt- 

 marsh turf, made up of Spartina pa tons remains to the depth of several feet, 

 by this method. 



"I am greatly interested in Johnson's Nantasket problem, and when I get a 

 chance I hope to go down and go over the ground there, not to question his 

 conclusions, but to get the lay of things better in mind. There must be a way 

 in which all of the facts we have before us can be reconciled, and the explana- 

 tion must be general in its application. I suspect that it lies in a slower rate 

 of subsidence than we have been considering, but have not been able to get 

 any evidence along that line as yet ; and even then it is hard to reconcile the 

 subsidence recorded at many points on the coast from Eastport to New York 

 with the beach ridges at Nantasket, as Johnson interprets them, the oldest 

 ridge practically at the present sealevel, and yet during its existence all of 

 the erosion which has to be assumed, according to Johnson, has taken place. 

 I can not see, however, that your suggestion that the Nahant case I cited is 

 insignificant because the whole section may have been cut back would hold 

 unless we assume that there has been extensive cutting at Nantasket as well, 

 and that Johnson is quite strenuous in denying. 



"No, when we get all the facts we shall be in accord. I am willing to let 

 the matter rest until I can get more records and digest them. In the mean- 

 time hammer away at me with all the objections you may think of." 



I sent him a sample of peat occnrring in an interesting channel exposed 

 in a cellar on Holland street, near Davis Square, cut in the fine sand and 

 overlaid hy a few feet of gravel, indicating apparently that the Cambridge 

 gravel plain has a double origin. He writes a letter of interest to those 

 who are making out two ice deposits hereabouts : 



"Depaetmbnt of the Inteeior, 

 "Washington, D. C, December 1, 1910. 

 "Yours with the interesting peat sample duly received this morning, and, if 

 possible, I would like some more of the same, and am sending you a bottle in 



