34 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ALBANY MEETING 



mailing tube and inclose frank lierewitli (if I don't forget it) for the return 

 of the specimen. 



"The material has abundant fragments of wood in it, and it is possible that 

 by looking carefully you may get some that are of good size, and there might 

 be some seeds in such matter also. 



"One notable thing about the vegetable matter is the high degree of carbon- 

 ization which it shows. It is not charred by fire, as shown in thin sections, 

 but is carbonized very much more than similar matter that I have received 

 from the old beaches in Illinois, where the vegetable matter is still so fresh 

 that it preserves all of its characteristics, including the power to absorb water. 

 I collected some woody matter along the Bvanston Canal during the summer, 

 which was perhaps 10 feet below the surface, in one of the Lake Chicago bars, 

 that was almost fresh — much more so than the wood often found in peat. 

 Why this deposit of yours so near the surface should show so much carboniza- 

 tion I do not see, unless it is very much older than the Wisconsin drift. You 

 may remember some wood that Cooper found in one of the shafts in Bay 

 County that had a similar old look to this stuff from your cellar hole, except 

 it was not so thoroughly carbonized. 



"I am much interested in Johnson's work on the marshes. 



"As a matter of fact, the very North River marsh which he cites to explain 

 the occurrence of stumps in all marshes in ten years has made a record that 

 gives it a different structure from any other marsh which I have seen, and 

 shows that this is a special case and can not be used to account for the forma- 

 tion of any other marsh I have examined. 



"The fundamental principle on which I have been working is that identical 

 species grew in the past under conditions that are the same as those under 

 which they are now growing : hence if we find, as we do, that the salt marshes 

 contain several feet of material made up of plants which now grow only on 

 the surface of the marshes where the average tide just reaches them, I feel 

 certain that the growth of the deposit began when the high tide just reached 

 the lowest stratum of these remains, and that each successive inch of the 

 deposit was for the time when it was formed the surface of the marsh, and 

 does not mean that the tide covered the surface to an average depth of 2 to 3 

 feet for long periods of time while the marsh was being built up. If such 

 were the history, there is not the slightest doubt that it would be recorded in 

 the marshes themselves by differences in structure. Moreover, if, as Johnson 

 says positively, there has been no subsidence for at least 3,000 years, there 

 would not be an acre of salt marsh in New England, for there is no chance 

 for doubt that at the present rate of silting these would long ago have been 

 built up to a level where the brackish-water plants would have come in : and 

 as these include some very rapid peat builders, such as the cat-tails and 

 Scirpus americanus, even if a minimum rate of building is assumed, the salt 

 marshes would have been eliminated. 



"However, of this 'more anon' ; but you see there are some things that can 

 still be said on the side I am espousing." 



The following e.xtract shows wliat he was doing in 1911 ; 



