Sees 
At many places, especially in areas covered by pine trees,there 
is a thin zone of white sand immediately beneath the surface of the 
sround, ranging from less than an inch to three or four-inches in 
thickmess.e This is a result of the removal of vegetal humus and 
iron oxides by a process of leaching that seems to be especially ef- 
fective under the conditions that obtain where pines are abundant. 
This bleached zone may be developed in the soil formed on till or 
glecio-fluvial materials alike, and its presence or absence is de- 
termiried by the chemical composition of “the rainwater seeping into 
the sround at the present time. This varies more from place to place 
because of the considerable differences in vegetation than because 
of the less significant differences in the mineral content. of the 
various kinds of glacial drift. 
Swamps and Bogs 
ry 
With the return of vegetation to this area,salt marshes devel- 
‘oped close to the coast where sandbars had formed lagoons by enclos- 
ing embayments in the coastline, and the inland ponds-and swamps 
were densely populated with plants of many typés. These flourished 
and died, and new senerations grew upon one another repeatedly, so 
that salt-vater peat was formed in the lower cistricts and fresh- 
water peat in inland hollows. Many of the smaller ponds in kettle- 
holes have been completely. filled with peat accumulated during: the 
centuries of Recent time. In-places this mat of vesetal tissue is 
more than 12 feet. thick. During the hurricane of 1936 waves broke 
ecross sandbars at some localities and plunged into such peat accu~ 
mulations. Great mattresses of peat several feet thick were loosened, 
carried out on the receding waves, dashed to thousands of fragments 
by the surf, These. were then spread along the teaches for miles 
from their source. Along certain -short stretches of the coast, 
shoreline erosion has cut back through the material’ on cne side of a 
modern peat bog and is now removing the peat. 
