THE 



ENTOMOLOGICAL MAGAZINi:. 



OCTOBER, 1838. 



Art. XLIII. — Communications on the Natural History of 

 North America. By Edward Doubleday. 



{Cont'mued from p. 407.) 



■ St. Johns Bluff, April 8tk, 1838. — The whole country on 

 .the St. John's river, as far as I have seen it, is more or less 

 sandy ; in many places it is nothing but a loose white sand 

 this is particularly the case at Jacksonville. It may be said to 

 be divided into pine barrens, hummock land, and swamps, to 

 say nothing of the salt marshes about the mouth of the river. 

 The pine barrens are either sand or clay ; the latter being, in 

 general, good land. A level or slightly rolling surface of white 

 sand, with tall pine trees not very close together, indeed some- 

 times very wide apart ; in some places a low growth of about 

 one or two feet high of dwarf oaks, scrub Tpnlmettos, Andromedes^ 

 Ammyrsine buxifolia^ and a few other stunted shrubs, or wire- 

 grass, mixed with various flowers, a large proportion of which 

 are syngenesious ; a great abundance of Smilax running over 

 the ground ; — such is a sandy pine barren. When the soil is 

 more clayey it is richer, and vegetation consequently becomes 

 more luxuriant. These clay pine barrens are principally higher 

 up the river, towards Picolata. Along the shores of the river 

 there is little pine barren, it being nearly all hummock land. 

 These hummocks consist of a thick growth of hard wooded 

 trees, as live, water, and other oaks, sweet gum, MaynoUw, 

 Gordonice ; and here, where the water is brackish near the river 

 side, tall palmettos, sixty feet iiigh, with an undergrowth of 

 NO. V. VOL. v. 3 G 



