Occasional Papers of the Museum of Zoology 5 



marshes. The vegetation of the upper beach and foredunes 

 consists of a scattered growth of beach grass and cottonwoods, 

 behind which there frequently occurs a zone of bunch grass. 

 This gives way on the slopes of the dune ridges to forested 

 conditions. Here and there remnants of a narrow belt of 

 pines are found along the lake face of the tirst row of dunes, 

 and near Sawyer the crests of some of the ridges are covered 

 with a growth of juniper and yew. Nearly everywhere, how- 

 ever, the bunch grass is succeeded by an oak forest. This 

 forest, in places rather xerophytic near the lake, is in general 

 of the mesophytic type. Toward the landward margin of the 

 dune area this oak forest gives place gradually to the climatic 

 beech-maple forest characteristic of the region ; this appears 

 first in the valleys and moist depressions. Other habitats are 

 represented by the marshes and low woods around the dune 

 ponds and the moist sandy shores and sand-bar herbage along 

 the streams which traverse the dune region. 



The forest conditions have been modified over most of this 

 area by a certain amount of lumbering, and by the fires which 

 have occasionally, and in places repeatedly, swept the dunes. 

 Only small patches of the original forest of large trees remain 

 here and there. There has been no recent lumbering or burn- 

 ing of any extent, however, so that the effect of this past 

 destruction of the forests is principally noticeable at the pres- 

 ent time in the small size of the trees over the greater part 

 of the dune area. On the whole, in spite of the changes the 

 forests have undergone, conditions in the dune region seem 

 more nearly to approximate the original conditions than in 

 any other area of similar extent in this part of the state. 



The habitats for Orthoptera recognized in the section of 

 the dune region studied may be listed as follows : 



