NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK 
457 
these animals were slaughtered by man, (Note 98) presumably 
upon or near the then beach, shows that there has been this much 
growth, (a quarter of a mile), within historic times. Several 
questions are involved in the problem of this growth. First, as to 
the source of the materials. This is principally sand derived from 
the rapidly wearing upland of the island and vicinity, supplement- 
ed by a great quantity of drift material, wood, eel grass, etc.* All 
of the residents agree that the cove opposite the plain is a sort of 
huge eddy in which the drift, worked along the coast by the 
westerly winds, meets a tidal current sweeping around the north 
end of the Island from the east and bringing its own contribution; 
the collective material is there driven by the prevailing westerly 
winds upon the beach. Certainly immense quantities of driftwood 
are beached here, enough to supply the residents of Grande 
Plaine with most of their firewood, and a vast quantity besides. 
Great masses of eel grass are also brought here after gales, and, 
becoming buried in sand, help the rapid growth of the shore 
of the island. Of course, in lesser degree, sand and gravel and 
other material are worked into this cove in the same manner. 
Second, we consider -the causes which have determined the plain- 
building in this particular place. The sharpness of the bank-line 
of the upland, (so obviously an ancient sea-margin that even the 
residents speak of it as such), shows that comparatively recently 
the sea beat directly against the upland, and the change to beach- 
building was very abrupt. Although the plain is evidentlv 
rapidly growing about its middle and widest part, it is being 
washed away at its upper end, so that it is in part material from 
the upper end of the plain which is forming its middle portion. In 
fact all the phenomena seems to me to agree i-11 showing that the 
plain formerly extended, no doubt accompanying a band of 
* Although the upland of the island is being everywhere washed away 
by the sea, in two other places a certain amount of beach building is in 
progress, namely at Birch and at Wilson’s Points. The residents, however, 
agree that this active beach-building has been in progress only about two 
years, prior to which both places were rapidly washing away. The build- 
ing of these places, if not indeed of Grande Plaine itself* must resemble 
that of the “forelands” of Nantucket, Mass., as recently described by F. P. 
Gulliver, (Report of the eighth International Geographic Congress, 
Washington, 1905,1 page 146). 
