550 JOURNAL 01'' FORESTRY 



Something like 2 per cent of the area is tidal marsh, and the forests 

 have been reduced by civilization to less than 30 per cent of their origi- 

 nal extent. The average stand of timber is 2,800 feet per acre, accord- 

 ing to Besley's figures, and about 30 per cent of the trees are evergreen. 

 The commonest trees seem to be sweet-gum, loblolly pine,^ white oak, 

 red maple, poplar, willow oak, chestnut, beech, black-gum, scrub pine, 

 and black oak, and the small trees willow, dogwood, and bay.^" Old 

 rail fences are rather common, indicating the former presence of chest- 

 nut in considerable quantities. (At present most of the trees of that 

 species are more or less blighted, as is usual within a few hundred miles 

 of New York City since 1906.)" 



3. The Choptank region, covering about 1,400 square miles on both 

 sides of the river of the same name, corresponds with the area of the 

 Choptank and St. Mary's formations on the peninsula, as indicated on 

 the 1906 geological map of Maryland. Its coast ward boundary, where 

 the Miocene strata are supposed to dip beneath sea-level, corresponds 

 approximately with the Nanticoke River. The region is rather low and 

 flat, with considerable marsh along both bays, and some of the rivers on 

 the Chesapeake side are navigable for steamers about half way across 

 the peninsula. The soils are moderately fertile, and the prevailing tex- 

 ture classes (in Caroline and Talbot Counties at least) are sandy loam, 

 silt loam, loamy sand, sand, loam, marsh, and meadow. (If Dorchester 

 County had been mapped by the Bureau of Soils, marsh would stand 

 higher, for according to Besley that county is 21 per cent marsh.) 



About 8 per cent of the area is salt marsh, 35 per cent forest, and half 

 fields and pastures. The average stand of timber in Caroline and Dor- 

 chester Counties, according to Besley, is 2,435 ^^^t per acre, and about 

 55 per cent of the trees are evergreen. The commonest large trees are 

 about as follows : loblolly pine, scrub pine, red maple, sweet-gum, white 

 oak, poplar, willow oak, black-gum, and red oak.^^ Among the small 

 trees bay, dogwood, holly, and willow prevail. 



4. The Pocomoke region (named for its principal stream) is nearly 

 coextensive with that part of Maryland and Delaware in which only 

 Pleistocene strata appear above sea-level. There is no known geological 



* /. e., Pinus Tccda. I have no evidence that the name "loblolly pine" is actually- 

 used on the Delaware peninsula, but that is the name most frequently used for 

 this species in the literature of forestry. 



^"Magnolia glauca. 



" See map of the chestnut blight area by Metcalf and Collins in Science, II, 

 35: 420, 1912, and comment on the same on" page 985 of the same volume. 



^- 1, e., Quercus falcaia (formerly digitata), which is called red oak through- 

 out the South, and not Q. borealis maxima, which is called red oak in most of our 

 books, that being a translation of its former technical name (Q. rubra). In this 

 connection see Ashe, Proc. Soc. Am. Foresters, // : 233-235. 1916. 



