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Show U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey Charts Show How the Sea Rearranges Its Bed calculated the location of the station where he stood, and was about to put it down on the chart, when he blinked. What had he found? He checked his work, and it was correct. cor-rect. According to the old chart, his station lay in water many feet deep, half a mile from the nearest dry land. The United States coast and Geodetic survey, chart makers for the United States, maintains eternal vigilance to keep abreast of all the changes that occur, especially on the more unstable and hirting portions por-tions of our coast. In many of these thousands of miles of shore line even a few years will see enormous changes. The point of Rockaway beach, opposite New York harbor, grows westward some 250 feet yearly, year-ly, a matter of several miles in a lifetime. Long Beach. Coney Island and Sandy Hook are all extending themselves toward the channel The seas do not like their living quarters. So they build up, tear down, and rearrange their beds, writes Elliott Roberts in Nature magazine. All of which adds to the labor of man, self-appointed recorder record-er of the changing movements of the sea and their effect on the contour con-tour of the land. The earliest explorers 01 our shores knew nothing of the deeps and shoals; they were blind men groping in a strange house. The situation is now remedied by charts of our oceans and coastal waters, so that great ships steam confidently where the first comers had to sound their cautious way. Still, we are forever confronted with the seas restless changes-deepening here shoaling there-and the advance or recession of the shoreline on many a mile of coast. The chart makers J?st be forever alert to the latest Ganges, to keep the charts accu- raA'surveyor. busy on the coast of South Carolina, stood by his mstru-Son mstru-Son the sandy beach just ou of reach of the breaking waves He |