NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK. 29 
could follow; hence the lagoons were formed. The coast is still 
sinking, and the beaches are still travelling inward, the sum 
total of the factors concerned giving us the conditions of the 
present day. It is thus seen that these beaches are remarkably 
mobile structures, and certainly they are among the most living 
and interesting of geographical features. 
109. — The Height of the Highest New Brunswick Water- 
fall. 
Read November 5, 1907. 
It is commonly believed by those having interest in such 
matters that the waterfall on Fall Brook, Miramichi, is the 
highest in New Brunswick. But the evidence is conflicting. 
Sir James Alexander, who was the first to mention it, estimated 
its height as sixty to seventy feet (L’Acadie, 1849, II., 225), 
and his opinion is of value, since he was a surveyor. I have 
been told by one of the Miramichi lumbermen, repeating no 
doubt a statement current among them, that it is ninety feet 
high. The Geological Survey map gives it as one hundred and 
twenty feet. 
All of these figures are obviously estimations, and apparently 
no measurement has yet been made. In September last I made 
aij attempt to measure it with precision. I was prepared with 
two methods. By the first I sought to find the height directly 
by lowering a weighted line from the brink above to the pool 
below, but it ended in failure and disaster to the apparatus. 
By the second I applied triangulation to the problem. With 
the aid of my companion, Professor A. H. Pierce, I measured 
a base line on the level of the pool, but some distance away, 
and from both ends took the angle of the brink by means of 
an altazimuth supported on a tripod. The results when worked 
out gave a few inches over seventy-five feet. This, however, 
is the height of the fall visible from below. Immediately above, 
though invisible from below, and separated from one another 
and from the main fall by intervals of a few yards, are three 
other leaps which make together about twenty- two feet. The 
