SUPPOSED EVIDENCES OF SUBSIDENCE OF NEW BRUNSWICK COAST. 63 
August, 1911, gave altitudes of 8-37, 7*71, 8-81, 8*97, 9-77, and 
10*63 feet above high tide mark. In the hollows, well within 
the vertical range of storm waves, gravels are common. The 
ridges themselves, however, so far as they exceed the altitude 
reached by the present storm waves (5*65 feet above the high 
tide mark) appear to be of aeolian origin. Passing inland 
across this zone of dune ridges, which on the old trail to Lake 
Frye consists of twelve distinct members, one finds behind 
them a large number of flatter ridges, formerly well clothed 
with forest, now to a large extent laid bare by the lumberman. 
As Professor Ganong has pointed out, 1 the crests of these 
inner ridges are somewhat lower than those near the shore. 
Herein lies what appears to be evidence of coastal subsidence. 
That the inner beaches are at least a few centuries old is inferred 
from the presence on them of bones of walrus, which were hunted 
here in great numbers by the early French settlers, and exter- 
minated shortly before the close of the eighteenth century. 2 
Professor Ganong’s walrus bone locality is about half a mile 
in from the sea, on the outer members of the inner group of 
beaches. From the published descriptions one would be led 
to suspect that enough subsidence of the coast had taken place, 
in the century and a half since the slaying of the walrus, to give 
the crests of these old beaches a perceptibly lower altitude than 
the crest of the present beach. 
In considering first the testimony of these walrus bones with 
reference to the age of the beaches on which they occur, we 
may accept without hesitation the view that the inner beach 
ridges were formed prior to the close of the eighteenth century. 
Furthermore, the absence of such bones from the outer ridges 
seems to show that these have been built since the days of 
walrus hunting, or since the beginning of the nineteenth century. 
However, it is possible that the ridges which have furnished 
the bones are of much earlier date than the walrus hunting 
period, since, as Dr. John M. Clarke has pointed out to me, con- 
1 W. F. Ganong: On the physical geography of Miscou. Bulletin of the Natural 
History Society of New Brunswick, vol. 5, 1905, p. 459. 
2 W. F. Ganong: The walrus in New Brunswick. Bulletin of the Natural History 
Society of New Brunswick, vol. 5, 1903, pp. 240-241. Also, R. M. Chalmers: Geolog- 
ical Survey of Canada, Annual Report, 1887, Part N, p. 27. 
