was.

VATES.

Poets are never in the wrong,
Whate'er the present age may say:
The future only, in their song,
Will see the truth of this our day;
And what a BRYANT says and sings
May well outweigh all false-born things.

THE PHYSICAL SURVEY OF NEW YORK HARBOR AND ITS APPROACHES.

No coast offers more admirable opportunities for the study, on a large
scale, of the effects of winds, waves, and currents, tidal and others,
on the movable matters which line the ocean shores, than that from New
York southward. Besides the peculiar local actions, there are general
ones, which are changing, slowly or rapidly, the whole of the sandy
coast line. While here the pebbles of the ancient drift are being
assorted by size and shape, and rolled into ridges and heaps, by the
action of the waves, there heaps and ridges of wet sand are formed by
the waves and travel under their motion, and the dry sand is forced
along by the winds, covering up meadows and woods, and changing the
ocean shore line; and in other or the same localities, sub-currents,
setting in a nearly constant general direction, roll onward the movable
materials of the bottom of the sea, or tidal currents roll them forward
and backward, giving the general direction of the resulting motion.

The reports of the Government and State engineers and commissioners,
public and private, who have studied the improvements of different
localities, have given us glimpses of the local, and even of the general
actions; but most commonly there has been a want of means or such
preliminary experiments as were necessary fully to develop the actions,
and which, like the stitch which saves nine, would often have saved the
costly experiment on the full scale of construction. Remarkable
instances of complete modes of investigation occur in the examination of
the Mississippi River by Captain A.A. Humphreys and Lieutenant Abbot, of
the Topographical Engineers, and by the commission of which General
Totten, Prof. Bache, and Admiral Davis were members. As most familiar to
me, from having taken an official part in the experiments and
observations made, I propose to notice the Physical Surveys of New York
and Boston, indicating the chief agents which are at work in destroying
and building up, so as to produce the present condition of these
important ports.

* * * * *

In connection with the surveys made a few years since by