FOREST REC(3NXAISSAXCE OF THE DELAWARE PENINSULA 551 



boundary to mark its southern edge, but that may be placed for con- 

 venience at or about the Maryland-Virginia line, where the peninsula 

 abruptly becomes too narrow to have any rivers on it. The area is about 

 2,000 square miles. The rivers remind one very much of some in 

 Florida, being sluggish, with coffee-colored water, navigable most of 

 their length, and bordered by swamps containing cypress and a few 

 other trees characteristic of warm-temperate regions. The soils are 

 rather below the average in fertility, and the prevailing texture classes, 

 as mapped in Worcester County about 15 years ago (with corrections 

 to 1913 from Bulletin 96 of the Bureau of Soils), are sand, sandy loam, 

 silt loam, swamp, and marsh. (Somerset County, whose soils have not 

 yet been mapped, is 16 per cent marsh, according to Besley.) 



Forests still cover nearly half the area, and there is considerable virgin 

 growth, especially in the swamps. Besley's figures put the average stand 

 of timber at only i ,823 feet per acre, which is probably explained by the 

 fact that the lumber industry is more active here than in any other part 

 of the peninsula, so that the trees do not have much chance to grow large. 

 Something like 65 per cent of the forest is evergreen. The commonest 

 trees seem to be loblolly pine, sweet-gum, white oak, willow oak. red 

 maple, water oak, scrub pine, red oak, black-gum, black oak, short-leaf 

 pine, cypress, and poplar, and the small trees holly,^^ bay, and dogwood. 

 Nearly all the cypress shown on Besley's forest maps of Maryland coun- 

 ties is in this region, along the Pocomoke River and its tributaries, and 

 the white cedar has a somewhat similar distribution in this latitude. 

 There are quite a number of shrubs and herbs here that are not known 

 elsewhere between the pine-barrens of New Jersey and North Carolina, 

 and the writer recently added to the list of pine-barren trees Pinns sero- 

 tina — or something closely akin to it — growing in several sandy bogs a 

 few miles southwest of Snow Hill. 



5. What may be called the Cape Charles region includes the main- 

 land of the two Eastern Shore counties of Virginia, about 500 square 

 miles. There is little information to be had about the geology except 

 that it is all quite recent, and no maps of the topography, soils, or for- 

 ests are available yet. The topography is rather flat, but not swampy, 

 and most of the surface seems to be 20 to 50 feet above sea-level. There 

 are no rivers, and consequently trees characteristic of swamps and al- 

 luvial soils are rare or absent. The soils seem to be mostly sandy loams 

 and fine sandy loams, and although they are below the average in fer- 

 tility, they respond readily to fertilization, and its climate and accessi- 



" Some of the holly in this region and the next is large enough for saw timber, 

 but its average size places it among the small trees. 



