GENERAL OBSERVATIONS AND SKETCHES AFIELD 295 



The Sand Dunes 



]HERE are few places possessing greater attractions 

 for the naturalist than the sand dune region of 

 northern Indiana. Stretching from the shore of 

 Lake Michigan back for a number of miles is a suc- 

 cession of beach, dunes, and fields. Each of these physio- 

 graphic areas bears its peculiar plant and animal societies. 

 Within the depressions are interior lakes, ponds, marshes, 

 swales, and bogs. The beach nearest the lake is a more or 

 less sandy waste, with scarcely any plants growing upon the 

 sand, and those that do manage to get a footing are mostly 

 bunchgrass and creeping plants. The dunes are made up of 

 great mounds of sand produced by the action of the wind, 

 and are continually shifting their positions. In doing so, the 

 dunes often engulf vegetation, and even large trees that lay 

 to the landward side of them. The few plants that grow on 

 the moving dunes are often buried and if not entirely covered 

 they often develop very large stems in becoming adapted to 

 their peculiar condition. 



Farther inward, shrubbery and grasses grow in some luxuriance 

 in the fields, and the older dunes farther in are covered by such 

 trees as pines, oaks, and other mixed forest trees. About the 

 lakes, ponds, and bogs there is often a rich flora. Unless one 

 has visited this interesting region, he can hardly realize what 

 a wild jungle these interior bogs and moors present, with their 

 rank growth of shrubs, cat-tails, and sedges. I recall as I 

 strolled through these places the Maryland yellow-throat war- 

 bler, the swamp and song sparrows, peering out from under 

 cover of the bushes as I passed through their domain. The frogs 

 lunge headlong, bending the cat-tails, in their wild leaps, into 

 the splashing water, while back from the edge of the pond in the 

 sand the fragments of white turtle eggs, scattered before the little 

 hollows in the sand, tell of the new progenies that have appeared. 

 At Miller, Indiana, one day late in summer, I started in 

 the morning to go along the wagon road leading to the old 

 Calumet River and the shore of Lake Michigan. Beside the road 

 my attention was drawn to some yellow primroses.^ I found 

 ' Onagra rhombipetala. 



