SALT MARSHES -PAST AND FUTURE 



ries, apples, maples and red cedars soon ap- 

 pear. 



So much for the marsh and its prominent 

 features, and so much for its past history. 

 How about its future? As Hog Island is a 

 himdred and forty feet high, one can easily 

 calculate that if subsidence continues to take 

 place at the rate of a foot a century, and if 

 the sand dunes continue to pile up and shut 

 out the sea, so that the marsh may build up 

 at the same rate, it will take fourteen thou- 

 sand years before Hog Island disappears be- 

 low the mantle of green marsh, which at the 

 present time has almost surpassed the pebbly 

 island of the Castle Neck River.^ What man- 

 ner of man will there be to see, and echo an- 

 swers what indeed? 



Eourteen rnillion years from now, the 

 marsh, after long and deep burial under heavy 

 loads of sediment and possibly of glacial till 

 and of lava floods, may perchance be lifted 

 up and emerge to the light of day from an 

 eroded mountain side as a sandy coal-seam. 



' It is probable that if the coast continues to sink the barrier 

 dunes will move inland, so that instead of Hog Island being over- 

 whelmed by the marsh it will be battered by the sea in the same 

 way that Great Boar's Head is now battered, and that it will finally 

 succumb to the assaults. 



227 



