St. Landry democrat., 1884-08-09
a Submarine Marsh.

Long Island biologists have been
pulling their brains over what they
consider very knotty problem. They
have remarked that every sou'easter
and southerly storm throws upon the
south-side beach Of Long Island large
masses of peat, Ignite branches, trunks
of trees. fossilized leaves, and animal
remains. The coast, it is said. after a
heavy wind and surf, is strewn with
these apparently unaccountable objects
from Atlanticville to Water Island. The
biologists state that the appearance of
the debris seems TO be the result OF the
wave action of the surf upon the re-
mains OF vast swamp at present sub
merged beneath the Atlantic Ocean.
At Speonk, in very calm weather, when
there is no sea, portions of the swamp,
it is alleged, are distinctly visible forty
or fifty feet beneath the water. Off
Moriches beach hook will bring up
portions of arboreal matter at ten and
twelve fathoms. An enterprising in
habitant of Speonk claims to have
traced this SO called antediluvian swamp
over half mile north and south and
ten miles in a line parallel to the shore.
The biologists, after due calculation,
have unanimously decided that the sub
marine swamp extends fifty miles
longitudinally and half a mile Iatitudin-
ally. Among the hotsam and jetsam
have been tree trunks two and three
feet in diameter, and one of these,
which was in an excellent state of pre-
servaton, contained three hundred
rings, or, in other words, gave evidence
of being three hundred years old An
other trunk, presented by the late Alden
j. Spooner to the Long Island Historical
Society, was half covered with shells OF
q nearly extinct biyalye. Now, say the
geologists, how did the swamp get
thereP
A Times reporter called on Prof.
Newberry, of Columbia College, and
asked him if he could throw any light
upon the matter. He unhesitatingly
replied that he could. 'The thing IS
simply this heremarked. The coast
is settling and what had been sWamped
places on the land have been submerged
by the waves. We find along the coast
of New Jersey, Staten Island and Long
Island evidences of a slow subsistence
going on at the present time, and that
which was forest land and marsh land
is now out at sea. In some places the
peat beds that were marshes on the land
have been submerged, and we find shell
fish bored into the peat. have plenty
of specimens to show that the level OF
the land has changed, and we have also
fresh evidence of that circumstance Ill
the fact that sttmps of trees of large
II, no. at
distance in the water, where they are
only perhaps visible at low tide. They
must have grown on comparatively dry
ground. So the New Jersey marshes
are portions of submerged land once
0vergrown with dense forests and large
trees. By a subsistence the trees have
been killed and buried in the marshes,
and now large business is done by
digging up these trunks. People
: probe the marshes with long rods
and extract the trees. The explanation
of the whole phenomenon is that there
is a subsistence going on. The land is
gradually sinking and the sea is coming
in and covering it, not more than four
or FIVE inches in q century. Ii it goes on
we shall have all our low lands flooded.
Great changes will be made here, of
course. That depression of the land has
already gone on to the extent of five or
six hundred feet, and the proof of that
is that the valley of the Hudson River
can be traced eighty miles out south
and east of New York harbor by de-
preston in the sea bottom, which could
not otherwise be accounted for. The
mouth of the old river was not only
eighty miles southeast of New York,
but it was five hundred feet lower. AT
that time the river ran through the
place where the Long Island sound now
is. The water has filled all these old
valleys. The subsistence is still going
on.
.Have you no means of fixing this
depression of the land by dates"
'.All the evidence we have leads to
the conviction that the depression has
been only one foot since the occupation
OF the coast by white people. It is not
more than three or four inches in a
century. How long it has continued,
and how long it VIII continue, nobody
can determine. 1t is one of the great
changes that are taking place on al
coasts. M Y. Times.
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