552 JOURNAL OF Forestry 



bility to northern markets have made this one of the most important 

 truck-farming regions along the Atlantic coast. Irish and sweet pota- 

 toes are the most important crops, and the rural population is remark- 

 ably dense — nearly loo per square mile — and apparently quite pros- 

 perous. 



Over half the area appears to be wooded at the present time, but 

 probably half the existing forest is second growth, on land formerly cul- 

 tivated but abandoned on account of exhaustion before the days of com- 

 mercial fertilizers. The boundary between forests and fields is pretty 

 sharp now, though, presumably indicating that very little farm land has 

 been abandoned in recent years. Fences are scarce, partly because the 

 fields are not, as a rule, pastured in rotation like those in the northern 

 half of the peninsula, and probably also on account of the scarcity of 

 suitable timber for rails or posts. The commonest trees seem to be lob- 

 lolly pine, scrub pine, sweet-gum, white oak, red maple, red oak, water 

 oak, willow oak, black oak, black-gum, and hickory, and the small trees 

 holly, dogwood, and bay. About 80 per cent of the trees are evergreen. 

 Small sawmills are common, mostly making barrels and boxes to ship 

 potatoes and vegetables in. 



6. The coast strip includes the sandy beaches, islands, and salt marshes 

 along the Atlantic coast from Cape Henlopen to Smith's Island, an area 

 of only 100 square miles or so. The marshes and narrower beaches are 

 treeless, but there are forests on the inner side of the beach strips where 

 they have a width of half a mile or more, and also on the inner islands, 

 such as Chincoteague.^* On account of the prevailing sandiness of the 

 soil the amount of forest cleared away by farmers is insignificant, per- 

 haps not over i per cent of the total. 



In the Maryland and Virginia portions of the coast strip loblolly 

 pine constitutes about nine-tenths of the forest, but toward Cape Hen- 

 lopen the pitch pine, which is rare elsewhere on the peninsula (but very 

 abundant in New Jersey), predominates. Next in order are sweet-gum, 

 water oak, red oak, post oak, and red maple. Holly is the only small 

 tree that is at all common. 



FORFST CENSUS 



The following table, indicating the approximate relative abundance of 

 the trees in each region, except for adjusting the evergreen percentages 



"The works of Rusby (Bull. Torrey Bot. Club, Aug., 1891) and Sterrett (Del. 

 Exp. Sta. Bull. 82), cited in my 1909 paper, give some idea of the plant growth of 

 this part of the coast, and more detailed descriptions of the vegetation in the 

 neighborhood of Cape Henlopen can be found in two illustrated papers by Miss 

 Laetitia M. Snow in the Botanical Gazette for October, 1902, and January, 1913. 

 See also, J. T. Rothrock, Forest Leaves, 2 : 83-85. 1889. 



