26 
BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
curues from headland to headland except three, — the minor case 
at the Mai Baies already explained, and those of Tabusintac 
and Buctouche. The latter are attached only at one end but 
are free at the other, and are outbowed. Yet in both cases the 
explanation is plain. The Tabusintac Beach has at present no 
southern headland except the peat-cliffs of the Blacklands, 
which are being eroded with great rapidity, and which obviously 
the free end of the Beach is following steadily landward. Yet 
I have no question that in recent times this Beach had a southern 
headland, off to the eastward, towards which it ran inbowed, 
though only a suggestion of such a place is given by the charts. 
Not only is the existence of such a headland probable from the 
Beach phenomena, but it is necessitated by the presence of the 
Blacklands, whose great deposits of peat must have had an 
upland rise between them and the sea. At Buctouche. the 
-explanation is different; here there is no peat and. at first sight, 
no visible cause for our phenomena. But inspection of the 
charts will show that off to the east of the Beach, in. exactly 
the position to which it would extend in the usual concave form, 
there lies a shoal of rock, called the “ North Patch," having 
upon it only two fathoms of water. This shoal was. no doubt, 
the old anchorage of the outer end of this Beach, which, deprived 
of support by its subsidence, is now swinging gradually land- 
wards at its freed end. This is confirmed by the presence of 
a great, somewhat incurved, bar extending from the North 
Patch south to near Cocagne Head, which bar. without doubt, is 
the eroded and sunken remnant of another old incurved Beach. 
I have spoken of the Beaches following the coast inward, 
which at once raises the question as to how these solid Beaches 
can thus move. One’s first explanation is that as the land sinks 
the sea mounts higher and higher upon them, so that the waves 
and wind can continuously move their crests landward, thus 
rolling the crests, so to speak, over and over landward. Yet 
observ ation shows that this mode of movement does not occur, 
except under unusual conditions to be mentioned below, for 
the sand can be built up above the highest tides very much 
faster than the subsidence occurs; and, moreover, the sand is 
