SUPPOSED EVIDENCES OF SUBSIDENCE OF NEW BRUNSWICK COAST. 51 
the sinking of the land has continued down to present time. 
Indeed, in the case of New Brunswick, there is positive evidence, 
in the raised beaches, fossiliferous clays, and associated deposits, 
that at the close of the Ice Age this coast was very much farther 
under the sea than now; and that an elevation of from 100 to 
200 feet has taken place, nearly but not quite restoring the 
region to its former position. Since the elevation of this coast 
is of later date than the stage of widespread submergence, it is 
more logical to conclude that the movement now in progress, 
if any, is upward, rather than downward. In any case, drowned 
valleys do not necessarily show what is the nature of the latest 
movement in a region. 
Barrier Beaches . — During the past few years, there seems to 
have been a growing opinion, on the part of experts in plant 
physiology and ecology, that barrier beaches like those of New 
Jersey and New Brunswick are evidences of coastal subsidence. 
While, so far as I am aware, this opinion has been expressed in 
print by only one author, it is entertained by others. 1 It is 
hard to see the reason for this view, unless it is that barrier 
beaches are commonly associated with salt marsh deposits, 
and that these are believed, upon botanical grounds, to testify 
to a modern progressive subsidence. The only attempt to 
outline a theory for the origin of barrier beaches, based upon 
subsidence, so far as I have learned, appears in Professor Ganong's 
notes on the origin of Portage and Fox islands. 2 Referring 
to the long, broken barriers across the mouths of the Miramichi 
and neighbouring estuaries, he says: “ Originally . . . they 
no doubt formed against the margin of the flat upland as ordinary 
shore beaches. But the steadily progressing subsidence carried 
the land beneath the sea faster than the beaches, whose rate 
of inward movement is determined by the erosion of the pro- 
tecting headlands, could follow; hence the lagoons were formed. 
The coast is still sinking, and the beaches are still travelling 
1 C. A. Davis and David White, in oral discussion of the question of modern 
coastal subsidence, at the eleventh annual New England Intercollegiate Geological 
Excursion, at Tufts College, Oct. 13, 1911. 
®W. F. Ganong: On the physical geography of the north shore sand islands. 
Bulletin of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick, vol. 6, 1908, pp. 6-13; 
and, On the physiographic characteristics of Portage and Fox islands, Miramichi. 
In the same volume, pp. 1-6, 
