The Northeast Coastal Fringe Province extends south from 

 Montauk Point on Long Island to the Tar River valley and Cape 

 Hatteras at the eastern point of Pamlico Sound and has 

 northern outliers in Cape Cod and its associated islands. It is 

 600 miles long from northeast to southwest as the crow flies, 

 850 miles in length along its landward or western curve, and 

 about 100 miles wide at its southern extremity. Its coast line is 

 enormously indented, measuring on ordinary land maps at least 

 5000 miles and on ocean coastal charts over 14,000 (estimated). 

 Its high-tide level edge varies all the time, as sandspits shift and 

 storms move mud banks. Its total area is about 45,000 square 

 miles, but almost a third of this is covered by waters either 

 fresh, brackish, or salt. It is North America's most indented 

 stretch of coast, surpassing in this respect even the coasts 

 of British Columbia and the Alaskan Panhandle. 



This province is almost wholly enclosed by the province here 



called Appalachia. On its southern border it meets the 

 Great Southern Pine Belt and this, in fact, at only one point 

 about midway between the headwaters of the Tar River and the 

 city of Raleigh, North Carolina. A subsidiary, triangular slip 

 of coastal territory, covered with pine barrens, muddy estuaries, 

 and sand dunes, extends south from the Tar River to about 

 Cape Romain. This is not a part of the Northeast Coastal Fringe 

 from an over-all ecological point of view, but it is a physical 

 extension of it. The province as a whole is really an extension to 

 the far northeast of the Parklands Belt. Thus its tree growth 

 is in the form of an isolated fades, and only shrubs make 

 a closed canopy. Its height-growth can be increased by added 

 rainfall but its over-all fades cannot be changed to a 

 closed canopy. 



The province may be divided into seven major parts, namely: 



(1) Cape Cod, with Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard islands; 



(2) Long Island; (3) the southeast New Jersey pine barrens; 



(4) the "shore" section of Delaware and Maryland between the 

 mouths of the Delaware, the Susquehanna, and the Potomac; 



(5) the three peninsulas bet'ween the Potomac and James rivers; 



(6) the Dismal Swamp area between the estuaries of the 

 James and the Roanoke rivers; and lastly, (7) the headland 

 between the Roanoke and Tar rivers that runs out to Pamlico 

 Sound and Cape Hatteras. 



This province is bounded on the east by the open ocean 

 but on the west and north by the "fall line." This line is 

 the escarpment marking the real border of the continent; it is 

 the point at which rivers running from the Appalachian 

 uplands finally tip off the edge of the continental piedmont and 

 old coastal plain, onto the newer beach deposits laid down 

 since the last ice advance. These deposits were first raised from 

 and are now again being slowly lowered into the sea on the 

 continental shelf. 



The province has a fairly high annual rainfall (fifty-three 

 inches) and a modest temperature gradient — much more so than 

 nearby Appalachia — so that snow hardly ever falls even on 

 Nantucket, and if it does it quickly melts. Although the soils of 

 the strip bordering the fall line may freeze in winter, those 

 of the coastal area never do. 



from the Davis Strait and the Arctic and the other from the 

 Gulf of Mexico and the tropics, each with its own fish and fish 

 food, meet here. All kinds of sea animals also gather off this 

 cape in a frenzy of gustatory delight, salt-saturated and vitamin- 

 starved southerners gorging on oil-filled morsels from the cold 

 north, and vice versa. There come also to this feast the pelagic 

 or open-ocean rovers to feed on both. And to this roiling mass of 

 assorted life come the dolphins by the tens of thousands, rushing 

 and leaping through the races and darting almost onto the beach 

 in pursuit of prey. 



The commonest is the Bottle-nosed Dolphin (Tursiops). 

 erroneously called "porpoise" in the South and especially in the 

 great sea aquariums of Florida. Also coming there are the real 

 or Common Dolphin (Delphinus delphis), a denizen of the open 

 blue water on this side of the Atlantic, and the Spotted Dolphin 

 (Prodelphinus), the champion jumper, while the superdolphin 

 known as the Blackfish (Globiocephalus) may be found a little 

 offshore but sometimes comes rushing onto the beaches in 

 droves. (Strangely, when they do so, even if they are hauled 

 back into deep water, they invariably turn right around and 



bumble ashore again.) The true porpoises (Phocaenidae) are not 

 found here or ever south of this point. They are quite different, 

 cold-water animals with blunt noses and strange trident teeth. 

 The fish called the Cory or Dolphin Fish — sometimes even simply 

 "dolphin" — is a deep-sea, warm-water creature but does some- 

 times get mixed up in the Cape Hatteras merry-go-round. 



The low coast to the south of this cape reflects the incidence 

 of warm as opposed to cold water, even to the extent that 

 massive phosphate beds have formed thereon, a material that 

 is not precipitated by cold waters. Naturally the beach material 

 moves slowly northward from the south and southward from 

 the north, but in both cases it tends to build both wide beaches 

 and offshore spits, though much more noticeably so to the north 

 than to the south. The reason for this is that the spin of the 

 earth causes the water in the northern oceanic basins to turn — 



To landward of the sand dunes this province is edged by 

 wide marshes. These form natural wildlife refuges and pro- 

 vide breeding grounds for many kinds of birds. 



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