MARYLAND WEATHER SERVICE 49 



Eummer months may cause the ground of cultivated fields or wood- 

 land to lie for hours or even days in a submerged condition. This 

 makes the ditching and draining of farm lands of great importance, 

 but in these operations it is often difficult to secure sufficient fall in 

 the drains to carry the water off. The total area of all classes of 

 marsh and swamp land in the Eastern Shore counties is 276,736 

 acres, of which 128,960 acres are in Dorchester County. 



Springs are of rare occurrence on the Eastern Shore. The 

 smaller streams are fed chiefly by surface drainage and are there- 

 fore subject to considerable fluctuations in volume or are intermittent. 

 The writer has been told that even as considerable a stream as the 

 Pocomoke River suffers a noticeable shrinkage of volume during 

 periods of several weeks with low rain-fall. All of the rivers save 

 the Elk and the North-East rise in the Coastal Plain, and the cur- 

 rents in them are extremely sluggish. The mouths are in all cases 

 drowned to form broad estuaries tributary to the Chesapeake Bay. 

 The tide in the Chesapeake varies from a range of 4 ft. in the Pa- 

 tuxent River to 1.4 ft. at Sharp's Island. In all the longer rivers 

 the rise and fall of the tide in the estuary at the mouth causes a rise 

 and fall of the waters of the upper part of the stream. In the Po- 

 comoke River at Snow Hill there is a mean tide of 2% ft., although 

 it is 18 miles above the uppermost part of the river in which the 

 water is brackish. The ebb and flow to which these waters ai'e sub- 

 jected co-operates with the gentleness of the fall of the stream bed to 

 render them sluggish. In the Pocomoke and Xanticoke rivers the 

 water has the rich amber hue characteristic of so many coastal rivers 

 that are bordered by cypress or white cedar swamps. 



The Coastal Zone; Western Shore District. — The Coastal Zone 

 of the Western Shore comprises all of St. Mary's, Charles, Calvert, 

 Prince George's and Anne Arundel counties and portions of Balti- 

 more and Harford counties, being bounded to the west and north by 

 the "Fall-line." The topography of the Coastal Plain of the West- 

 ern Shore may be stated in general terms to be a late initial stage in 

 the dissection of a peneplain. The maximum elevation varies from 

 60 ft. in Harford County and 250 ft. in Anne Arundel County to as 

 much as 292 ft. in portions of Prince George's County. The 



