638 The American Naturalist. [August, 
Many’s the time I’ve gone nesting for them in the cedars that 
used to be yonder.” 
“What do you mean by the cedars that used to be 
onder?” ` 
“On the bluffs just over there (pointing to the Bay). Sixty 
year ago that bank was a good deal higher than now, and 
reached a sight further into the Bay, though the tide comes up 
just as close as it ever did. -But there’s a mighty big change 
there. There used to be a thick forest of red cedar on the 
bluff, and the mockers, a plenty of them, built there every 
summer, and there was no trouble in finding a few nests. But 
there’s not been a single cedar there for many years—just how 
long I disremember. You see the bluff got going to sea so 
fast they had to cut the cedars to save them. You can see the 
stumps yet at almost any neap tide. It ’most beats belief that 
the bluffs ever reached so far as them stumps. Why in my 
time a pretty good farm has gone off to sea. There used to be 
a brick yard—that has gone off too. It lay a little north of 
them cedars, and something can be seen of it when the tide 
suits. Old Auntie Willets, now dead and gone, used to milk 
the cows along side of what we called the black rock. That’s 
gone too, and I should think it has sunk considerable, for it’s 
little more than the top of it that one can see at neap tide.” 
I was surprised at the amount of, geology I was abstracting 
from my informant, and felt that he was getting away from 
the subject in hand, so I asked: “ Have you seen any mocking 
birds in these parts of late years?” 
“Not one in many years as I can remember. The woods 
don’t seem to favor them now. In the time of the cedars they 
were plenty.” 
To the old man the word “subsidence” incautiously used 
by me had no meaning. He had a reason of his own. “ Nat- 
urally the sea was uprising, sort of overflow on the land. Was 
it not all the time receiving the waters of all the rivers in the 
world without any let-up whatever ?” 
It was some thirty years ago, perhaps more, when I accom: 
panied the late Prof. George H. Cook, the State Geologist, in 
an inspection of the entire south side of Raritan Bay, my 
MERES aie 
