THE WHITE PINE REGION 297 



sandy plains and terraces. Between these valleys are areas of 

 low rolling hills. The hills are highest and roughest in New 

 Hampshire and Massachusetts in a belt east of and paralleHng 

 the Connecticut River. A larger portion of swamp land is found 

 than in the northern hardwoods region. 



Granites form the predominant underlying rock, but the bed- 

 rock is not so noticeable as in the spruce region. This is because 

 glacial and river deposits in enormous quantities have been 

 left, obscuring the bedrock. All through the region are found 

 glacial soils and formations, while drumlins and moraines of 

 gravel and sand are characteristic features. The soils are sandy 

 and gravelly in nature, although all classes are found. Sandy 

 loam is the most common soil, but many areas of pure sand occur, 

 as, for example, in extreme southeastern Massachusetts, on Cape 

 Cod, and in Plymouth County. Here rolling hills of sand de- 

 posited by glacial action cover nearly the entire country. These 

 sandy soils are free from surface rock, but the stiffer soils are 

 in many cases thickly strewn with loose stones. On the whole 

 the soils are less stony than those of any of the other three New 

 England forest regions. 



It may easily be inferred that a region characterized by such 

 sandy soils will, if forested, be stocked with pines, and this 

 occurs here. White pine is the chief tree, the region being an 

 optimum one for it. It is, however, not the only forest region 

 in the United States which affords conditions for the best 

 development of white pine. There are two others, one in the 

 northern part of the Lake States, the other in portions of New 

 York and Pennsylvania. 



Much of the better land has been cleared so that the forest is 

 broken up into small areas, much smaller than was the case in 

 the northern hardwoods region. Over small areas in the higher 

 and more hilly portions, or on the worst sandy soils, as much as 

 eighty to ninety per cent may be in forest or waste land. The 

 average, however, is in all probabihty about forty per cent. The 

 forested per cent may be expected to remain about the same or to 

 increase slightly rather than to decrease during the next genera- 



