180 FORESTS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 



or semi-swamps. When they occupy the summits of the divides 

 hetween watersheds, as is the case with some of the largest, they 

 are poorly drained and often wet. They include two' classes : 

 (1) Those having a primarily pauperized soil of coarse sand, or 

 of finer sand, silty, and more compact. (2) Those having an 

 impervious stratum of clay, filt or hard-pan underlying the top- 

 soil and preventing percolation of the water to underground 

 streams or its exit by subsoil drainage. The latter may have 

 soil rich in nutritive elements though eminently unproductive. 

 During winter and spring such soils are saturated ; during sum- 

 mer and autumn, from inability of subsoil moisture to rise to the 

 surface through the impervious layer, they are exceedingly dry. 



The largest areas of such swamp lie in Bladen, Craven, Jones, 

 Parnlico, Tyrrell and Washington counties ; while a considerable 

 portion of the Dismal Swamp, in the northeastern corner of the 

 State, has a-soil and growth of this character. 



The forest, even in the best condition, is exceedingly open and 

 thin, there being an irregular growth of pine 40 to 60 feet in 

 height, the mature trees averaging about 14 inches in diameter, 

 and a denser underwood of small white bay, red bay and loblolly 

 bay, almost impenetrable on account of the thicket of the gall- 

 berry, huckleberry, and species of Andromeda and similar shrubs 

 beneath them. Where the soil is of better quality, either more 

 fertile, or because the impenetrable substratum is deeper beneath 

 the surface, there is more pine, often a considerable part of it being 

 loblolly, and the underwood is less dense. Where the soil is least 

 fertile there is least pine and a denser thicket of shrubs. 



Next to the long-leaf pine the pond pine is less exacting in 

 regard to fertility of soil than the other pines, growing, in many 

 places, on the soils which if dry the long-leaf pine would occupy. 

 The young plants of the pond pine will endure a considerable 

 shade for many years. When young specimens are accidentally 

 broken, eaten off by cattle, or top-killed by fire, they sprout 

 freely. During dry seasons conflagrations sometimes consume 

 the shrubby underwood, destroying much of the timber. When 

 the pines are thus burned out, the white bay puts forth abundant 

 suckers, forming dense thickets, and the red bay numerous shoots ; 



