108 College of Forestry 
mission of 1885 it is stated that after cutting beaver meadows 
or vlaies for three years they become so matted down as to be 
improved by burning. ‘This means of course a change in the 
substratum to a firmer meadow floor rather than a tussocky 
marsh. In their content of “ gay wild flowers’? mixed with 
grasses and sedges is indicated their identity with grass- 
lands generally. 
Smythe' has called attention to these meadows as anatural 
stage in the building up of the substratum (lake filling). 
Reference has been made on previous pages to the effect of 
glacial filling in the Adirondacks where just this frequence 
of lakes and of sluggish streams invites the occurrence of 
large areas of hydrophytic vegetation, notably of marsh or 
marsh meadow, marsh shrub and swamp-forest. 
Of course the ‘beaver meadows” are assumed as the 
name suggests, to have been formed by beaver dams. So 
far as this may have been the case, however, the dam must 
have first entailed the destruction of some forest cover (pop- 
ple, ete.) so that the meadow is in such eases a reversal of 
natural succession. In reality it is not likely that any great 
proportion of such meadows is to be ascribed to the activity 
of the beaver. 
6. Swamp Shrub Vegetation. 
This type of vegetation will be familiar to you when you 
recall the large patches of alder thicket and the still more 
extensive willow flats observed in traversing the State, not- 
ably the Mohawk valley above Little Falls, the lake and 
marsh region west of Syracuse, the Ontario Basin from 
Syracuse to the St. Lawrence valley, the St. Lawrence val- 
1 Smythe, C. H., Jr. Lake filling in the Adirondacks. Amer. Geol. 
XI, 1893. This cites especially Big Rock meadow west of Morehouse- 
ville in Hamilton county. Other lakes two to ten miles north and west 
of Big Rock Lake are spoken of as “ entirely surrounded by meadows ” 
and Big Vlaie as “covered by tall grass.” This “tall grass” is, 
according to the present writer’s observation, generally blue-joint 
(Calamagrostis canadansis [Michx.] Beauv.). 
