458 
BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
glacial upland, much farther northward, its position being in- 
dicated by the shoals marked on the charts and described in the 
‘‘Sailing Directi ons/' At that time the eddy would also have 
been farther north. It wias the sinking of the island which 
permitted the sea to cut off its northern end and roll it, so to 
speak, with the eddy, down the coast, a process still in progress.* 
And it will no doubt continue until all of the plain north of the 
upland, with Lac Frye (once, apparently, a lagoon like Mai Baie 
and perhaps earlier a fresh-water lake) will have vanished, and 
a much broader plain will have grown gradually southward, fill- 
ing the cove north of Eel Brook. Finally we consider the exact 
details of the mode of building of the successive beach lines, 
which, clear enough in the cases of the single barrier beaches, is 
not so obvious where these form a multiple series. In this beach- 
building, I believe, the presence of the drift wood, eel-grass, etc., 
plays an important part. All stages of the process may now be 
seen in operation. The sea at ordinary tides throws the drift 
wood (largely great trees and cut stumps washed out of rivers 
by the freshets, with refuse from the mills, etc.) on the beach 
and the highest tides push it yet higher, until finally some com- 
bination of great tide and strong storm pushes it entirely beyond 
reach of the waves. Then the dried sand, driven landward bv 
the winds, collects among the wood, and gradually buries it in a 
low dune beach. Meantime the beach grass, succeeding the first 
beach plants, takes possession and gradually binds the sand so 
that it no longer moves with the wind. At the same time the 
beach is growing outward, more drift wood is accumulating, 
presently a new dune-core is formed, and so on in successive lines. 
That the drift wood does thus form! a core in the beach is shown 
by the pieces projecting from the various outer beaches, though 
from the inner this has all vanished by decay. It may be that the 
♦The abrupt transition between the forested inner beaches and the 
swales and outer beaches, a transition shown not only by a difference m 
age of the trees but also by the step from narrow! sandy beaches to broad 
swales indicates, I believe, an interval between the building of the original 
Grande Plaine, and the addition of the new beaches from material rolled 
down the coast. I have, perhaps, made this point clear in my paper (above 
cited) on the vegetation of Grande Plaine. 
