NANTUCKET TREES 



The question is often asked: "Was the Island of 

 Nantucket ever forested?" I am not attempting to es- 

 tablish a case for either an affirmative or a negative 

 ansver to this question. I have attempted rather to 

 collect data, geological, botanical and historical vhich 

 refer to Nantucket trees and to present them in sequence 

 as glimpses of the past. Any ansver to the question to- 

 day can be only surmise, but the data collected do in- 

 dicate a series of changing conditions. 



The argument falls into tvo divisions according 

 to the connotation given the vord ever, -whether it be 

 reckoned by the geologist.' s time or by man's time on the 

 Island. To a geologist time is very long. He calls 

 2,000,000,000 years a conservative estimate for the age 

 of the earth. 48 The Great Ice Age of Pleistocene time 

 to vhich is due so much of the present land contours of 

 Northeastern America vas, as it "were, a moment in the 

 late afternoon of the vhole geologic span. 37 



Here is a page from the history of Nantucket as 

 geologists have compiled it. The Wisconsin stage of the 

 Pleistocene glacier, determined by its moraines, reached 

 its farthest southeast extension across the upper half 

 of vhat is nov Nantucket. 52 Nantucket must then have 

 been merely a lov hill on the mainland, for it seems a 

 veil-established fact that from late Tertiary times 

 through the Pleistocene age of Quaternary time, the 

 North American continent vas bordered by an uplifted 

 coastal plain vhose eastern limits vere about 100 miles 

 off the present-day shore. 21 Even after the melting of 

 the ice., some 20,000 years ago, 2 the vide coastal plain 

 is believed to have persisted long enough for the de- 

 velopment of a climax forest from the Carol inas up to 

 and including Nevfoundland. Pernald, in discussing the 

 results of botanical exploration in Nova Scotia, states, 

 "...if there vere need of further evidence that, since 

 the Pleistocene glaciation, the continental shelf of 



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