SUPPOSED EVIDENCES OF SUBSIDENCE OF NEW BRUNSWICK COAST. 67 
progress, while the latter supposes a downward movement of the 
land which demands further demonstration. Inasmuch as 
barriers are known to have been constructed on the shores of 
lakes in which no relative subsidence has occurred, and the pro- 
cesses of shore drift, working alone, are competent to account 
for them, the assumption that where such barriers occur the 
coast has been subsiding is entirely gratuitous. 
(4) The disappearance of the hooked ends of re-curved spits 
beneath the surface of lagoons is not an evidence of coastal 
subsidence. On the contrary, this is the form which hooks 
necessarily assume on shores where no change of level is in 
progress. 
(5) An examination of localities where trees have been said 
to be dying from invasion by high tides does not afford as good 
evidence as one might expect. If, as one may fairly question, 
the dead trees at Pokemouche and Saint Simon rivers register 
a submergence of the low upland border by salt water, this 
submergence may be due to recent increase in range of tide, 
which in some estuaries might be considerable. On the other 
hand, if this coast were subsiding fast enough to kill the trees, 
this sort of evidence should be apparent in favourable situations 
throughout the region — which is distinctly not the case. 
(6) The peat bogs or barrens of sphagnum and associated 
fresh-water plants, whose bottoms have been reported to reach 
ten or fifteen feet depth below high tide mark, appear to extend 
only two or three feet, at most, below that level. Inasmuch as 
these bogs seem to have grown up in enclosed inland basins 
before the sea encroached upon them, it is not impossible that the 
basin floors, originally a few feet below high tide level, but not 
below mean tide level, were covered with fresh water. The 
fact that, so far as observed, and measured, the bog deposits 
approximate but do not exceed the depth of mean tide level is 
itself reason for favouring the view that neither subsidence nor 
elevation has taken place during their growth. 
(7) A detailed survey of the beaches on Grande Plaine, Miscou 
island, which seem to register a period of at least three hundred 
years, indicates that so far as these are true wave-built beaches 
they testify to coastal stability rather than coastal subsidence. 
