48 
MUSEUM BULLETIN NO. 2. 
washed away, during the last two centuries and a half. 1 Lobster 
factories near Miscou point, Point Escuminac, and other places 
have been swept away by the recession of the cliffs, and rebuilt, 
farther inland, over and over again. According to Mr. Kenneth 
McClellan, lightkeeper at Point Escuminac, the lighthouse 
originally stood about 500 feet seaward from its present position, 
and was moved inland about eighty years ago, because of the 
rapid encroachment of the waves against the low cliffs of sand- 
stone at that point. Since that time, the sea has advanced 
about 100 yards, and is now threatening to demolish a building 
where the fog horn is installed, unless the Government takes 
prompt measures to protect it. There is no doubt that along 
most of the open coast of New Brunswick, the sea is now advanc- 
ing upon the land. 
It does not follow, however, that because the shore-line is 
moving inland, the coast is sinking. In a brief note on “Evid- 
ences of sinking of the coast of New Brunswick” 2 Professor 
Ganong explains that the washing of the sea through the 
gateway of old Fort Moncton, described by Gesner, 3 must be 
accounted for by a washing away of the coast, rather than by 
an actual sinking of the ground beneath the sea. Ganong, 
nevertheless, argues that the rapid cliff recession thus recorded, 
which measures over 70 yards in a century and a half, is an 
evidence of subsidence. “This washing away of the upland 
can only be explained by a marked sinking of the coast, though 
the amount of the sinking is not thereby determined.” 4 Were 
it not for the fact that this idea of a necessary connexion between 
cliff recession and coastal subsidence has been widely circulated, 
it would seem hardly worth while to point out the possibility 
that all this encroachment can be accounted for by the horizontal 
cutting of waves against the foot of cliffs, attended, as it is, 
by the scouring down of the inclined shelf which lies below, and 
without any downward movement of the coast whatsoever. 
1 W. F. Ganong: Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 
second series, vol. 12, 1906, p. 133, also in his translation of Nicholas Denys’ History 
of Acadia, published by the Champlain Society, 1908, p. 202. 
s W. F. Ganong: Evidences of the sinking of the coast of New Brunswick. Nat- 
ural History Society of New Brunswick, Bull., vol. XIX, 1901, pp. 339-340. 
3 Abraham Gesner: On elevations and depressions of the earth in North America. 
Quarterly Journal of the Geol. Soc. London, vol. 17, 1861, pp. 381-388. 
4 Op. cit., p. 340. 
