146 Harper: Explorations in Georgia 1903 



The typical topography of this region (as is finely displayed 

 around Tifton, for example) is gently rolling, less so of course 

 than in Middle Georgia, but decidedly more so than in the adjoin- 

 ing lime-sink region. A straight line drawn in any direction 

 across the rolling wire-grass country would cross, on the average, 

 two or three valleys to the mile, the bottom of each valley con- 

 taining a sluggish and often intermittent stream, the water of which 

 is never muddy but usually tinged with brown from vegetable 

 matter. The average difference in elevation between the smaller 

 valleys and the adjacent ridges is probably twenty or thirty feet. 

 Creeks and rivers are of course encountered at longer intervals. 



Probably at least nine-tenths of this region, in its natural con- 

 dition, is pine-barrens, and the remainder is mostly swamps, which 



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border every stream, and sand-hills, which occur along most of 

 the creeks and rivers. The lime-sink region, in Southwest Georgia 

 at least, is also about nine-tenths pine-barrens, the remainder being 

 mostly river-swamps, ponds and lime-sinks. Streams are as 

 scarce in the lime-sink region as they are numerous in the Alta- 

 maha Grit country. In August, 1903, I went on foot from Bain- 

 bridge (on the Flint River) west to the Chattahoochee, a distance 

 of about twenty-eight miles, and did not see a stream of any kind 

 between the two rivers except Spring Creek, which rises in the 

 Eocene country about thirty miles to the northward. 



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Ponds are less frequent in the region under consideration than 



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in some other parts of the coastal plain, and those that do occur are 

 almost invariably shallow enough to dry up every year, and full 

 of trees (principally Pim/s Elliottii, Taxodiiun imbricarhnn, and 

 Nyssa biflord) ; never containing a dense growth of glumaceous 

 plants (such as Mauisuris Chapmani^ Paniciim digit arioides.Homa- 

 locenchnis hexandrus, EleocJuiris, Dichromena, Rhytichospora) or 

 shrubs {Crataegus aestivalis^ Hypericum fasciadatuui, Cephalan- 

 thus), like many of those along the inland edge of the lime-sink 

 region, or deep and permanent enough to contain species of Pota- 

 mogeton^ Utricidaria and various Nymphaeaceae, like the large 

 ponds of Decatur and Lowndes counties. Another interesting 

 feature of this region is that it contains nearly all the sand-hills of 

 the coastal plain, with the exception of those along the fall-line. 

 The following species are common and conspicuous in the 



