520 HARPER: CLIMAX VEGETATION 
but that is pretty closely related to P. palustris and very similar 
in its habits.* 
On the Gulf coast of peninsular Florida, islands are rather 
scarce; but the coast of west Florida, Alabama, and Missis- 
sippit is very similar in topography and vegetation to that of 
North Carolina, already referred to. Dr. Hilgard has described 
some sandy peninsular hammocks on the coast of Mississippi, 
differing from true peninsulas only in that the open water bordering 
them is partly replaced by marsh; and their vegetation, from his 
account,{ is very similar to that already described. 
Besides the peninsulas on the shores of lakes and oceans, there 
is another very common class, of worldwide distribution, formed 
by creeks and rivers. River peninsulas may be either at the 
confluence of two tributaries, or in ‘‘ox-bows” formed by me- 
andering (and either kind may develop further into islands). 
Almost every one, in the southeastern United States at least, has 
noticed that such peninsulas, even above the reach of overflow, 
usually seem to have the richest soil in the neighborhood, and if 
not already cleared and cultivated, they are likely to bear some 
fine hardwood timber. This feature is of course more conspicuous 
in the long-leaf pine regions of the coastal plain, where the forests 
away from the’streams are essentially of a pioneer type, than it is 
in the hardwood regions farther inland, where the contrast can 
never be so great. 
Similar instances might be multiplied indefinitely ;§ but the fore- 
going will probably suffice to show the universality of this relation 
between climax vegetation and small land areas wholly or partly 
surrounded by water or marshes, in our coastal plain. Almost the 
only exceptions to the rule seem to be those islands and beaches 
* Pinus caribaea has been confused by recent writers on North American trees 
with P. Elliottii, a common and characteristic species of pine-barren ponds, branch 
Swamps, etc., from South Carolina to Central Florida and Mississippi. They are 
not easily distinguished in the herbarium, but their ranges and habitats are quite 
different, P. caribaea being semitropical, and having about as little use for water as 
P. palustris has. 
+ For a description of the vegetation of some of the islands of Mississippi see 
Lloyd & Tracy, Bull. Torrey Club 28: 61-101. pl.8-rr. 1901. 
Geol. and Agric. Miss. 383, 384. 1860. 
§ The reader who is sufficiently interested to follow up the matter can find descrip- 
tions of many peninsular hammocks in Bartram’s Travels and other works of similar 
nature. 
