GEOLOGICAL AGE AND FORMATION. 39 



few years since a skull was picked up on the strand which 

 had the appearance of one long buried, and which had 

 probably fallen from the bank. At dead low water, the 

 marks of three wells can just be distinguished at the same 

 place. Nathan C. Price, surveyor at Town Bank, says his 

 lines, which run to the shore, are shorter by forty or fifty 

 rods than they were in 1776. The Cedar Hummocks at 

 Goshen are also wearing away. 



From the Cedar Hummocks to West Creek there are no 

 sand beaches, and the salt-marsh is exposed to the direct 

 action of the waves. Dennis Creek is said to have lost 

 more than a mile of its length within the last sixty or 

 seventy years, by the wearing away of the marsh at its 

 mouth. Several rods in width of the marsh are sometimes 

 worn away during a single storm. Four years since, a 

 human body, in an advanced stage of decomposition, was 

 washed up on the shore near the mouth of Dennis Creek. 

 It was carried in forty rods from the shore, and buried in 

 the marsh. A year ago it was found the shore was worn 

 away quite up to the grave, and the coffin was washed out. 



Mr. James L. Smith, of Stipson's Island, who has sur- 

 veyed much of the land about Dennisville, says there was 

 always a largo allowance made by the old surveyors in 

 running out the marshes, so that it is difficult to trace their 

 Knes with accuracy ; but that, to the best of his judgment, 

 a strip fully three-quarters of a mile wide has been worn 

 from the marsh, the whole distance from West Creek to 

 Dennis, since the first surveys were made.* 



« Numerous facts of the same kind have been collected along the shores of Delaware 

 Bay and River, in Salem and Cuatberland Counties, and on the sea-siHe in Atlanrio, 

 Ocean, Monmouth, and Middlesex Counties. 



