SAND DUNES AND SALT MARSHES 



are stumps of forest trees still in position in 

 leaf-mould and peat beds below the level of 

 high water. In a cove near Bass Point at 

 Nahant the stumps of white pine and white 

 cedar, hemlock, spruces, ash, oak and maple 

 are to be seen covered by thirteen to sixteen 

 feet of water at high tide. In Lynn Harbor, 

 and in the Saugus marshes, at Swampscott, 

 Marblehead, Manchester and in Salem Har- 

 bor, these remains of submerged forests are 

 also found, while near Misery Island, when 

 the tide is low and the water still, stumps of 

 forest trees may be seen at a depth of twelve 

 to fourteen feet. In a marsh at IpsAvich that 

 is flooded by the great tides of the full moon 

 of spring and fall, several stumps of great 

 trees are to be seen imbedded in the salty peat. 

 One of the old farmers told me that when he 

 was a boy an old man used to say that his 

 father remembered when this region, now 

 fiUed by the black-grass marsh, was occupied 

 by a grove of forest trees. Professor E. C. 

 Jeffrey very kindly examined chips from two 

 of these stumps for me, and found that one 

 was a white pine, and the other a swamp white 

 oak. 

 In 1804 and 1805 Dr. Nathaniel Bowditch 

 212 



