CHAPTER IX 



SALT MARSHES - - THEIR PAST AND FUTURE 



" 0, call back yesterday, bid time return." 



— Shakespeare. 



IN a study of the past it is convenient to 

 have some definite point from which to 

 date. To the original settlers on these 

 shores Noah's flood was a ver,y real catas- 

 trophe, in which everything on the earth was 

 washed clean, and, by a reference to the Bibles 

 of those days, or even to the Bibles of fifty 

 years ago, one may learn that this flood oc- 

 curred 2,349 years before Christ. To our fore- 

 fathers the time that had elapsed since the 

 flood was a long period to contemplate, but 

 nowadays we are contented to look upon the 

 fifty thousand years more or less, since the 

 last glacier left these shores, as a mere mo- 

 ment of time in the great past. There is no 

 doubt that the glaciers compared favorably 

 with Noah's flood in cleansing power. Every- 



206 



