38 GEOLOGICAL AGE AND FOEMATIOK. 



sand banks from fifteen to thirty feet high were standing, 

 and covered with living trees. The rapidity with which 

 these wear away is diiferent in different years. Dr. Learn- 

 ing, of Seaville, thinks that the Seven-mile Beach, opposite 

 his residence, has worn away a hundred yards within the 

 last twenty years. Other residents of the county, who are 

 familiar with the beaches, think this estimate not a large 

 one. 



Mr. Ezekiel Stevens says, that from the accounts given 

 him by his father, the shore in front of the boarding-houses 

 at Cape Island must have worn away nearly a mile since 

 the Eevolution. During the war of that period a militia 

 artillery company had its practicing ground here. Their 

 gun was placed near a house which stood just outside the 

 present shore line, and their target was set up at the outer 

 side of a corn field three quarters of a mile east. Beyond 

 this there were sand beaches for nearly or quite a quarter of 

 a mile, and then the sea-shore. The whole of this ground 

 is now gone, and one of the boarding-houses has been 

 moved back twice. The wear has not been as perceptible 

 for a few years past, the bank having been protected by a 

 covering of cedar brush. 



At Town Bank, on the Bay-shore, where the first settle- 

 ment in the county was made in 1691, there has been a 

 rapid wear of the shore. In a note made by Aaron Learn- 

 ing, in relation to the grave of his grandfather, who was 

 buried here in 1694, he says : " In 1734 I saw the graves; 

 they were then fifty rods from the Bay, and the sand was 

 blown up to them. The town was formerly between them 

 and the water. There were still some signs of the ruin of 

 the houses." The grave-yard is now all washed away. A 



