GEOLOGICAL AGE AND FOEMATION. 57 



Seven-mile, Five-mile, Two-mile, and Poverty Beaches are 

 wearing away fastest at their southwest extremities ; the 

 effect of which is very apparent in the narrowed ends, as 

 exhibited on the Map. Poverty Beach, in particular, has 

 almost all worn off. On an old map of New Jersey, en- 

 graved and published by William Eaden, in London, in 

 1777, it is called Four-mile Beach, and extends downwaMs 

 from Cold Spring Inlet for that distance; now it is not a 

 half-mile long on the part which has sand banks. 



Section 2 is taken across the beach on the Bay-shore, 

 sixty yards south of the steamboat landing. There is the 

 same series of parallel ridges of sand to be seen here that 

 were in the other section, and equal irregularity in the 

 ridges near the water ; but instead of a salt-marsh behind 

 it, the last sand ridge lies directly upon the upland. Lilly 

 Pond, which is here shown, is somewhat noted from being 

 the only fresh-water pond on the Cape, below Cold Spring ; 

 it is at high-water mark, and storm tides have occasionally 

 driven the sea-water into it. Beaches of this sort are found 

 all along the Bay up as far as the Cedar Hummocks, and 

 beyond that they formerly existed between "West Creek 

 and Maurice Kiver ; and they can be traced up the east 

 bank of that river to Millville. These beaches are wear- 

 ing away on the water side. 



The cedar swamps of the county are so extensive, and 

 the deposits of peaty earth, or muck, which they have 

 formed are so great, as to make an important feature in the 

 geology of the county. The tree of which these swamps 

 are composed, is the white cedar, the Gupressus thuyoides 

 of the botanists. It is an evergreen, which thrives best 



