84 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [AUGUST 
transition zone where the forest is pushing its advance into the cpen 
ground. The mode of formation of this remarkable plain, invcly- 
ing the anomaly of extensive land-building on a sinking coast, I 
have described somewhat fully elsewhere. Briefly, the facts are 
these. As the result of peculiarities of the topography, wind, 
and tides of this region, there is formed on the shallow north- 
western side of Miscou a kind of great eddy in which all movable 
materials, sand and gravel from the wear of the rapidly crumbling 
adjacent coasts, as well as driftwood, waterweeds, and cther 
flotsam, often from a great distance, tend to collect, and thence 
are driven ashore by the prevailing westerly winds. Formerly the 
island extended farther north than now, carrying with it both eddy 
and plain; but the general subsidence actively in progress in this 
region has carried its low northerly end beneath the sea, thus fcrcing 
the eddy and the accompanying plain-building gradually southward. 
The northern end of Grande Plaine today is being rapidly washed 
away (compare map), to be redeposited farther south, and the plain 
as a whole is thus rolling by its outer margin southward along the 
coast. The subsidence of the land has produced another effect 
upon the plain, and one of considerable consequence to its vege 
tation, namely, its inner and older part averages somewhat lower, 
that is, less above sea-level, than the outer and newer part, thus lead- 
ing to a settling of water towards the older inner parts, and a rela- 
tively higher water-table in them. That we have here a beach plain, 
instead of a series of lofty sand dunes, is the result of the fact, app@™ 
ently, that the dry sand of the beach is blown ashore no faster than 
the beach grass can fix it. At both the northern and southern ends 
of the plain, however, there is some approach to a building of 
true, though low, dunes. 
My brief study of the vegetation of Grande Plaine was entirely 
observational, not at all instrumental, nor do any metecrologic#l 
or other exact physical data for this region exist. Grande Plame — 
lies at sea-level in latitude 48°, beside a shallow sea, warm in summer 
but frozen over in winter. The summer climate is rema 
equable, of a temperature most comfortable for man, with no fogs 
and but little cloudy weather. The rainfall must be not far from 
3 Bull. Nat. Hist. Soc. N. B. No. 24:453. 1906. 
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