132 Rhodora [JuLY 
Gray Herbarium the specimens in question have been identified" ete., 
ete. In this case the number of specimens was large, the proportion 
of interesting ones small, and more than the usual thanks are due for 
the work involved. АП the specimens have been incorporated in the 
herbarium of the New England Botanical Club. 
What general conclusion, if any, can be drawn from these notes? 
In Eastham the conditions of sterile sandy soil, lack of drainage or 
water courses, remoteness from active human influences, and increased 
influence of saline conditions are carried to an extreme, as compared 
with the region near Boston, with much the same climate; and we 
find: — within the range of salt water, practically the same flora; 
strictly aquatic plants, practically the same; domestic plants, not 
cultivated but thriving near cultivation, largely the same but keeping 
close to house or barn; weeds, many absent, a few, Spergula for 
instance, more abundant than usual, but most species in a reduced 
form; trees few and stunted but covering much ground; few fruit- 
bearing plants, but two, the beach plum and the low blackberry, 
luxuriant and with delicious fruit; herbaceous plants with few species 
but often many individuals, grasses, sedges and rushes especially few 
species; of the larger families Cistaceae and Leguminosae apparently 
best represented, Labiatae, Ranunculaceae, Cornaceae and Saxifra- 
gaceae with poorest representation; ferns, fungi and lichens, not 
strong; algae, marine and fresh water, well represented. On the 
whole, probably not half so many species as would be found in 
Swampscott, Cohasset or any similar seashore town near Boston. 
Poverty everywhere when out of reach of fresh or salt water. 
Is time likely to bring any change? It is hard to say, but when we 
compare the desolate appearance of the town today with the accounts 
of what it has been, it seems to be going to the bad generally. Asa 
boy I remember great fields of corn and rye where now are only dense 
woods of pitch pine; I have seen linen cloth, spun and woven on the 
spot, from flax raised there. Of course much of this change is due to 
changed social conditions; a farmer's family can no longer produce 
most of what it needs; work is specialized, and two or three acres of 
asparagus, tended by one man for three or four months of the year, 
now bring more actual money to the family than the whole labor of a 
family on a large farm did in the old times. But for the town as a 
whole, the diminution of fertility has been marked. In the History 
of Eastham by the Rev. Enoch Pratt, published in 1844, changes 
