NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK. 
27 
soon so fixed by the beach grass that there is no great movement 
landward thereafter. On the contrary, the whole tendency of 
wind and waves is to build the beach outward, precisely as we 
see them doing upon a huge scale both at Grande Plaine and 
at the south end of Portage Island. There are, however, two 
principal ways in which the Beaches are moved inwards. In 
the case of those with one free end, like Tabusintac and Buc- 
touche, it is easy to see that the waves and wind are continually 
planing off the sand and moving it in the prevailing wind direc- 
tion (here from the northeast), towards the free point, where 
it is carried around and dropped in the quiet eddy under shelter 
of the point. This process, if continued long enough, especially 
when aided by the occasional action of winds blowing into the 
lagoon, gradually works the whole point inwards in a long curve 
concave to the shore. Moreover, as the older Beach thus becomes 
worn thin and low, the Beach Grass can no longer hold it, and 
then the wind may aid directly by rolling the sand inward over 
the crest of the beach. The second, and upon the whole the 
most important, method is the carrying of the sand through 
the gullies into the lagoons, where it is deposited as bars and 
shoals; these gradually become low islands which form the nuclei 
of a new inner line of beaches. A very fine example of this 
mode of origination of a new inner beach line is found in the 
series of new-forming little islands inside and between Tabusintac 
Beach and Neguac Beach; and there are other cases in Kouchi- 
bouguacsis Lagoon and elsewhere. Then in time the gully fills 
up, and this is always at the expense of the material of the 
neighboring beach, which is thereby moved inward just that 
much. Every formation of a gully, therefore, means the move- 
ment inward of a considerable portion of old beach. Now these 
gullies are very unstable and shifting structures, and in two 
main ways. First, every gully is steadily, though slowly, 
building out its windward point, viz., that towards the prevailing 
winds, on exactly the principle described above for the free 
ends of beaches, and is cutting away its leeward point. Thus 
the gully is moving slowly along the coast in the direction of 
the prevailing wind, and its movement is accompanied by the 
