106 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 



known as "the plains" lying due west from Tuckerton. 

 They are seldom visited save by the berry picker or an occas- 

 ional traveller taking a short cut to some distant village. If 

 one can imagine a slightly undulating piece of ground, stretch- 

 ing away in all directions to the horizon and covered every- 

 where with diminutive pines and oaks, which, although not 

 more than knee-high, bear their cones and acorns as plenti- 

 fully as their more favored kin in better soil, he will Inve a 

 fair idea of the region. The natives express its sterility by 

 asserting that the only land tortoise ever captured in the 

 locality was inquiring the way to the poor-house. In all this 

 expanse, the tallest tree — a sassafras — is but fifteen feet high. 

 To the botanist this section is of considerable interest since it 

 contains several plants that are rarely found elsewhere. 

 Among these may be mentioned the crow-berry, a low heathy 

 plant which very few botanists have seen growing. 



Among the most attractive spots in the barrens are the low 

 places where the water comes to the surface. Here the sand 

 vegetation suddenly gives way to cranberry bogs set thick 

 with sundews, bladderworts and pitcher-plants all busily en- 

 gaged in trapping insects. Or a greater depression may con- 

 tain a cedar swamp whose tangled depths are the source of 

 one of the amber-colored streams which leisurely wander away 

 to join one of the numerous small rivers of south Jersey. As 

 one emerges from the plains in the direction of Wading river, 

 these bogs become very numerous, notwithstanding which, 

 it is claimed that there is no malaria there and the natives 

 drink from any running water with impunity. 



The mosquito is everywhere in evidence, but by day these 

 are not the greatest of the stinging, biting pests that inhabit 

 the barrens. The crow-flies, black as night and as large as 

 grass-hoppers, and several kinds of horse-flies which apparent- 

 ly consider man much better than a horse, are abundant and 

 dwarf the mosquito's puny efforts into nothingness by com- 



