natural history and physiography of new Brunswick 
45a 
Thus we see that Miscou Island, while given its general form and 
size by the remnants of upland not yet sunken beneath the sea, 
has most of the details of its form, especially its system of grace- 
ful inward curves, given it by the barrier beaches festooned from 
upland to upland. 
Such is the present position of the beaches. They are, how- 
ever. by no means fixed, but among the most highly plastic and 
unstable of geographical features. Aside from the swinging of 
their basal ends with the inward moving upland, they show, in 
Miscou at least, two other marked movements. The first is in 
the position of those breaches or gullys which, ever tending to be 
closed by the waves, are ever made anew by the pressure of the 
accumulated waters inside. The older maps of Miscou all show 
the gullys of Lac Frye, the two Mai Baies, and Miscou Gully 
itself, in different positions at different times, and such changes 
show their traces on the outlines of the beaches themselves. 
Again, at two points on the shore outside the dune beaches 
(namely just south of Eel Brook on the west coast, and north of 
Birch Point on the northeast coast) I found beds of peat, showing 
that the beaches are moving inward as the island sinks, a point 
further to be discussed below. 
We turn next to that very striking and remarkably interesting 
modification of the dune beach, the great beach-plain called 
Grande Plaine. Its general position, form and relations to the 
neighboring uplands are well shown, in large part from actual 
survey, on the accompanying map. It is in effect a multiplication 
of the usually single dune-beach up to some thirty or more parallel 
beaches, the whole resembling with their crests and hollows a 
gently-swelling sea suddenly changed to sand. Towards the sea. 
and for part of its breadth, it is open and treeless, clothed only 
by the waving beach grass and a few low growths nestling in its 
shelter ; but the other half on the land side bears a low mixed 
forest, which has obviously advanced on the plain from the 
neighboring upland. From the mature forest to the open grass 
of the beach there is a definite step, the ibransition being marked 
by very pleasing close-turfed swales with park-like avenues and 
clumps of scattered trees. This nascent forest proved of such 
