1911.] ATLANTIC AND GULF COASTAL PLAIN. 315 



types and those of live-oak barrens. Among existing localities which 

 I have visited which impress me as duplicating the climatic and other 

 physical conditions indicated by this late Pliocene flora are the estu- 

 aries along the gulf coast of Alabama and western Florida, among 

 which Apalachicola, Mobile. Perdido and Pensacola bays are the 

 larger. The Santa Rosa peninsula which separates the latter from 

 the Gulf of ^lexico supports a flora that is very similar to this 

 Pliocene flora and one or two of the species represented in both 

 are closely allied and may even be identical. 



Pleistocexe. 



Pleistocene plants are also common throughout most of the 

 coastal plain and when they shall have been thoroughly studied they 

 will yield a large body of exact facts which will throw much light 

 upon the immediate ancestry and migrations of our existing flora. 

 Already more than one hundred species have been recorded, most 

 of which are still existing and these indicate a very difl^erent geo- 

 graphical distribution from that of the present coastal plain flora. 



COXCLUSIOX. 



I have only had time in the foregoing remarks for a very frag- 

 mentary and incomplete sketch of the present study which has really 

 only just commenced. With the complete exploration of the area 

 and the additional collections which it is hoped to make it is believed 

 that the combined results of the speakers studies of the fossil floras 

 and those of his associates on the fossil faunas and the areal geol- 

 ogy will furnish a basis for reconstructing the physical, faunal and 

 floral history of the southern states, during the several millions of 

 years from the Cretaceous to the present, which will constitute a 

 lasting contribution to the history of the earth. 



