AN ANCIENT DUNE. 53 



without reason, particularly to the oaks. These are of slow growth, 

 yet reach to the largest dimensions. It is within a short distance 

 from this dune that, until 1869, there stood a white oak (Quercus 

 alba) which was twenty-seven feet in circumference, three feet from 

 the ground. It was, unquestionably, at least one thousand years old,^ 

 but we have no warrant for assuming that this ancient tree was the 

 ancestor of all the white oaks. On the contrary, this forest, when at 

 last felled by the settlers, who sacrificed all beauty to their god, 

 utility, was the remote descendant of a primeval forest growth 

 which began to flourish who shall say when ? 



If this locally known " Pearson Oak " was the remote descend- 

 ant, as is logically certain, of Quercus I. of the reign of Oaks, or the 

 last of a long line of forest monarchs, then we must ascribe to the 

 forest floor or that soil which in slow course of time accumulated 

 during the period that the " dune " and its surroundings were for- 

 ested, an antiquity which removes it from the remotely historic to a 

 strictly pre-historic time. 



I know of no means of determining when the forest age was 

 ushered in, except that we view it from the point of physical geog- 

 raphy, if not really a geological standpoint. The forest growth 

 would not start until the condition of soil was favorable, and, in 

 this instance, a change from a coast-line condition to an inland one 

 and strictly fresh-water upland, quite uninfluenced by the ocean 

 tides. How long then was this change in taking place ? Also, when, 

 while an herbaceous flora was in its prime, did tree-growth begin? 

 Was it not until the lesser, annual growths had flourished long 

 enough to spread a thin soil due to decomposed vegetation over the 

 old " dune " ? Grasses, more pretentious flowering plants, perma- 

 nent shrubbery, might well have had a long day of their own, before 

 the overshadowing tree-growth began to encroach on their domain, 

 and there is not a particle of evidence forthcoming that the reign of 

 oaks was not a period of several thousand years. 



The result of the forest growth is the formation of " black soil," 

 as it was called by Peter Kalm,^ and how long it took a foot or more 

 of it to accumulate is problematical. It was never a period of wholly 



1 See Annual Report, Smithsonian Institution, 1876, p. 260. 



2 " Travels into North America," London, 1770, Vol. II., p. 19. 



