GEOLOGY AND NATURAL HISTORY. 481 



and thence eastward at several points along the south shore of Long Island. In 

 the ditches in the marshes, above Salem, great numbers of the stumps and trunks 

 of trees are met with at all depths, down to the solid ground. At Elsinboro' 

 Point, a little farther down oh the Delaware Bay shore, the cutting away of the 

 marsh by the water has left great numbers of stumps exposed, where they can be 

 seen at every low tide still firmly rooted in the hard ground. They are also 

 common in all the marshes of Cumberland County, and great numbers of them can 

 be seen in the marshes on Main River, at Dorchester and below. In Cape May 

 County they are seen everywhere in the marshes and the creeks, on the Dela- 

 ware Bay ; on the inside of Seven Mile Beach, on (.he sea side; and below Luc- 

 kakoe, on Great Egg Harbour. In the marsh on '.he Raritan, above South 

 Amboy, hundreds of them were dug out in cutting a canal across a bend in South 

 River. The marshes on Staten Island also contain buried timber ; and on Long 

 Island, at Hempstead, and still further east, the same fact is of constant occur- 

 rence. At several places in Southern New Jersey an enormous quantity of 

 white cedar timber is found buried in the salt marshes — sound and fit for use, and 

 a considerable business is carried on in mining this timber and splitting it into 

 shingles for market. At Dennisville there is a large tract of marsh underlaid by 

 cedar swamp, earth and timber. By probing the marsh with an iron rod, the 

 workmen find where the solid timber lies, and then removing the surface sods and 

 roots, they manage to work in the mud and water with long one-handed saws and 

 cut off the logs, which then rise and float, as the timber is not water-logged at all, 

 but retains its buoyancy, and the removal of that nearest the surface releases that 

 which is below and it rises in turn, so that a new supply is constantly coming up 

 to the workmen. In this way a single piece of swamp which is below tide level 

 has been worked for fifty years past, and still gives profitable returns. 



Other facts tend to the same conclusions. The owner of an extensive tract of 

 land, between Maurice River and West Creek, informed the author that within 

 the last fifty years he had lost 1,000 acres of timber by the tides running higher 

 on the upland than they formerly did. On West Creek he was shown portions of 

 upland on which good crops of wheat had been raised, within thirty years, which 

 are now liable to be overrun by the tides. The same farm has, within the last 

 fifty years, lost fifty acres — part wood and part cultivated land — in the same way, 

 and taking into account all the evidence noted by himself, or set forth by others 

 who had directed their attention to the subject, he could find no other theory 

 which would embrace all the facts, than that of a slow and continued subsidence 

 of the ground. 



In regard to the rate at which this subsidence was going on, Professor Cook 

 quoted the result of several examinations — three of a subsidence of three feet in 150 

 years, one of two feet in 100 years, two of one foot in fifty years, — and one of four 

 inches and one of eight inches in two years. From these facts he conceived he might, 

 with some degree of probability, set the average subsidence in the district where 

 the observations were made, at two feet in a century, and he believed that this 

 would also apply to all the observations yet made on the New England coasts. 



ON PARTHENOGENESIS OF ANIMALS ANn PLANTS — BT B. SEEMANN, F.L.S. 



One of the most paradoxical questions, recently brought under the notice of men 

 of science, is that known as the Parthenogenesis of Animals and Plants. 



