THE SEA-COAST 



243 



sandy, it is quite natural that the maritime 

 plants for the most part are equally at home 

 upon sand soil without salt. Experiments 

 made by the author with plants from each 

 zone show that all of them can subsist inland 

 in river silt without salt. The Yellow Horned 

 Poppy, for instance, will grow and produce 

 abundant flowers and seed in an ordinary 

 gravel drive, and Sea Campion is if anything 

 more luxuriant in river alluvium. Sea Heath 

 does well under the same conditions. At the 

 same time the xerophytic characters evoked 

 by the excess of salt are largely lost when these 

 plants are grown inland. 



Methods of Survey. The zonation of the 

 maritime plants and the diversity of the vege- 

 tation necessitates to some extent a different 

 method of survey of each zone. But generally 

 the method of studying meadow or pasture 

 plants may be applied here, more especially 

 in regard to the salt marsh, in so far as the 

 mapping of the association is concerned. 



The problems of soil character, origin of 



each formation, and its inception and growth, 

 which are rather the work of the advanced 

 student, need not be detailed here fully (see 

 Professor Oliver's work on Blakeney). 



In the case of the sandy coast, and the 

 muddy coast, it is important to consider the 

 continuous or discontinuous character of the 

 plants that one notices. The distance of each 

 from the sea at high tide, the zonation of each 

 type within the first zone, the slope of the 

 shore, and the aspect are each objects for 

 study. The adaptations of the plants to the 

 halophytic conditions are also points for ob- 

 servation. The shingle beach may be studied 

 in the same way. On the sand dunes the part 

 played by the Marram, Lyme Grass, and other 

 Grasses in protecting the sand from erosion, 

 and the influence of the Grasses upon the other 

 types, will be the principal features to be 

 studied. In the salt marsh the associations 

 should be studied with a view to discovering 

 the effect of one type upon another, and the 

 order of colonization of each plant. 



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