480 AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION. 



studied by any person desirous of examining the subject. In the construction of 

 these flexures, side-pressure is the only thing thai can be thought of. A slow steady 

 irresistible pressure seems to have been brought to bear upon the rock, alternately 

 hard and soft, so that when brought arouud upon each other the soft ones have been 

 obliged to yield to the hard ones. The bed of coal alluded to is within 

 100 feet of the top of the old conglomerate. Above the top shales there is a mass 

 of fine-grained sand-stone. But the effect as exhibited in these flexures could not 

 have been so great, but for the fact that immediately below there is a bed of 

 fine white clay, thirty or forty feet thick. How much of these flexures are the 

 result of the forcing forward of this fine clay is one of the practical questions to 

 which future observations must be directed. 



The seams below the one now referred to have never been opened, and ac- 

 cordingly have not been studied, so that it is impossible to say whether these 

 flexures correspond with those underneath. This is unfortunate, meanwhile, 

 because one of the questions which the practical geologist is most anxious to 

 have solved, is how far this pressure carries itself forward in vertical lines. 

 But as the progress of mining operations will tend to effect the desired exposure 

 of the lower strata, geologists may be glad to have their attention directed to the 

 subject thus early. 



SUBSIDENCE OK THE LAND ON THE NEW JERSEY COAST. BY PROFESSOR G. H. COOK, 



OF rutgee's COLLEGE. 



In the course of some geological examinations near the coast of Southern New 

 Jersey, the author's attention had been called to various facts indicating a change 

 in the relative level of the land and water at some recent period. An attentive 

 examination of these led him to the conclusion that a gradual subsidence of the 

 land is now in progress throughout the whole length of New Jersey and of Long 

 Island; and from information derived from others, he was induced to think that 

 this subsidence might extend along a considerable portion of the Atlantic coast of 

 the United States. The occurrence of timber in the marshes and water, below 

 tide-level, is common along their whole Atlantic shore. Almost every one fa- 

 miliar with shore-life had observed the remains of logs, stumps, and roots, in such 

 places, although they had been looked upon generally as the remains of trees torn 

 from their original place of growth by torrents, or by the necessary moving of the 

 shores, and deposited in the places where they were found, by the ordinary action 

 of the Avater. But close examination made it evident that they grew upon the 

 spots where they are found. The stumps remain upright — their roots are still fast 

 in the firm loamy ground which underlies the marsh, and their bark and small 

 roots remain attached to them. The localities in which they are most abundant 

 are such as are least liable to be affected by the violent action of the water, or of 

 storms. Thus they are by far the most abundant on the low and gently sloping 

 shores of Long Island, New Jersey, and all the States farther South which are 

 protected from the violent action of the surf by a line of sand beaches, at the same- 

 time that the numerous inlets allow free access to the tides. In these protected 

 situations hundreds and even thousands of acres can be found in which the bottom 

 of the marshes and bays is as thickly set with the stumps of trees as is the ground 

 of any living forest. His own observations were chiefly made upon the southern 

 part of New Jersey, following the shores of Delaware Bay from its head down to 

 Cape May, and the All in tic shore from Cape May north to Great Egg Harbor, 



