ear 
BD 
The New York State College of Lorestry 
shrub cover where the surface is built up in tussock lke 
mounds. Under the heaviest forest cover of the bog the peat 
is more decomposed, being blacker and muckhke. Important 
as bearing on the history of the vegetation cover is the fact 
that throughout the marsh under the present sedge cover, as 
well as under the shrub and conifer associations there are 
buried legs and the stumps of black spruce and tamarack. 
(Figure 13.) All of these so far as examined, showed tlre 
charred effects of burning. In some places fire charred snags 
still stand (Figure 14), showing that a conifer bog forest 
formerly occupied the area. 
As in typical basin peat bogs the peat blanket is ordinarily 
water soaked and the living sphagnum cover reeking wet. ‘The 
free water table fluctuates, however, so that after long sum- 
mer drouth the surface of the bog, especially in the sedge zone, 
becomes dry and crisp. That is, the dead but not disintegrated 
sphagnum layer becomes dried out and then, of course, the top 
layer of living sphagnum is more or less completely killed by 
drying. No doubt this recurrence of summer droughts mate- 
rially checks the aggressiveness of sphagnum in what appears 
to be its tendency to smother out the sedge and shrub species.* 
On the other hand, in wet seasons, as observed for example in 
late October after heavy fall rains, the water table is high 
enough to lie free above the sphagnum surface throughout the 
sedge zone and between the mounds in the shrub zone. Borings 
made at the end of a severe drought period and again at the 
same locations after heavy rains showed that the whole peat 
blanket shrinks and swells with the fluctuations of the water 
content or of the water table. Thus at station 10 on the F 
profile (see Map 1) the peat depth on August 12, 1919, 
atter more than two weeks of hot dry weather, was 24 inches; 
on August 19 after a heavy rain, 30 inches, and on Novem- 
*It should be noted that as the bog surface becomes built up so that, 
it is permanently above even flood water level, the moisture demanding 
Sphagnum recurvum, generally dominant in the open bog, becomes 
replaced by the more xerophytic species, S. capillaceum var. tenrellum 
and S. fuscum. On the other hand, during flood water periods the 
habitually submerged Sphagnum cuspidatum enjoys a season of notable 
vegetative activity apparently becoming dormant as the water subsides. 
