1912] Knowlton,— Flora of Duxbury, Massachusetts 19 
ham, Medway and Holliston, where it merges into the central Massa- 
chusetts plateau. It is a region of obstructed drainage and sluggish 
streams, with many ponds, and the waters find their way gradually 
into the North River, the Taunton and the Charles, which flow east, 
south and north respectively. The low hills and ridges are naturally 
covered with oak or pine. Some of the ridges are fertile and pro- 
ductive, but agriculture seems to find its best land in the meadows. 
The real interests of the people are in the manufacturing of the larger 
towns. The people merely occupy the country, without doing over- 
much to develop it. 
Thousands of acres are in the broad sand-plains so typical of the 
section. These and the low glacial knolls are covered with the 
inevitable Andropogon scoparius and Betula populifolia. The mead- 
ows seem to be low-lying sand-plains, containing much humus, but 
little or no clay, and the swamps and ponds are underlaid by water- 
washed sand and gravel of glacial origin. The swamps are occupied 
by Acer rubrum or Chamaecyparis thyoides, but many of them, and 
some of the wetter meadows and shallow ponds have been made over 
into cranberry bogs. 
The eastern portion of this sand-plain country, comprising the 
northern half of Plymouth County, has been very little known botani- 
cally. It is especially interesting from its proximity to the sea, and 
because it runs into the big terminal moraine which begins in Kingston 
and Plymouth. I have made several trips of exploration to Hanson, 
Halifax and Pembroke, which lie just back from the coast, in this 
corner of our district, but outside of a few characteristic plants like 
Solidago Elliottii, S. tenuifolia, Leucothoe racemosa, Ilex opaca, I. 
glabra, Woodwardia areolata and Aspidium simulatum, the sand- 
plains and swamps might have been in the Merrimac valley, around 
Lowell, Tewksbury or Chelmsford, 45 miles further north. When 
I came to explore Duxbury I expected to find much the same flora, 
plus the halophytes and xerophytes of salt marsh and sea-beach. 
In general I found this to be true, for most of the species mentioned 
above seem to flourish there, but I found in addition enough other 
plants of interest to warrant this publication. 
Along the seashore grew some 35 maritime species. Among these 
may be noted Salicornia ambigua growing freely with S. europaea, 
S. mucronata, Atriplex arenaria, Suaeda linearis and S. maritima. 
Xanthium echinatum flourished on the shore edge of the salt-marsh, 
