SALT MARSHES -PAST AND FUTURE 



comes compacted into a loose sod of mud, 

 stems and roots, a soft, muddy, peaty mass. 

 Thus, thougli the very foundation of things 

 is sinking, the bottom does not drop out, and 

 the depression is so gradual that the grass 

 easily keeps pace with it. 



As the tide sweeps alternately up and down 

 the estuaries twice a day each way, it bounds 

 back and forth from side to side with great 

 symmetry of rhythm, eating away one bank 

 by its swift current, while the opposite bank 

 extends itself outward in comparatively calm 

 water or in counter eddies, and here it is that 

 the thatch grass flourishes. Another place 

 where one can watch the extension of the 

 thatch, the pioneer in this great march of the 

 marshes, so to speak, is on the large sand flats 

 gradually building up in regions of compara- 

 tive calm outside of the full swing of the tides. 

 On one such flat in the Castle Neck River 

 there are now nine thatch islands from two 

 to twenty-five feet long, besides five small 

 single tufts of grass, and none were to be seen 

 there twenty years ago. In another place a 

 large thatch island a hundred yards long and 

 half as wide has appeared and grown within 

 the memory of one of my farmer neighbors 



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