1906] GANONG—NASCENT FOREST OF MISCOU BEACH 85 
45 inches. Heavy winds from the west prevail in summer. The 
soil is of pure quartz sand derived from the wear of the gray carbon- 
iferous sandstones of the region, this sand having, of course, the 
usual relations to water-supply, mineral nutrients, etc. No other 
special factors with a bearing upon the vegetation appear to be 
prominent. 
We turn now to consider the vegetation. Although it presents 
every gradation from humble herbs of the open beach to the densest 
woods, nevertheless the eye becomes accustomed to recognize, and 
the speech to designate, certain definite vegetational regions. These 
represent the modes or climaxes, as it were, in the vegetation curve 
—the parts which exhibit a distinctive character in the physiog- 
nomy of the whole. They are the following: (1) the new beach, 
(2) the grass plain, (3) the swales, (4) the sandy woods, (5) the 
closed woods. 
THE NEW BEACH. 
The characteristic open, or new, beach of Grande Plaine, the 
kind which best illustrates the mode of growth of the plain, is to 
be found opposite its middle and broadest part; for towards the 
northern and southern ends its structure is modified by local condi- 
tions of erosion and dune-building. Outside of all is a broad sloping 
inter-tidal beach of pure sand without vegetation (fig. 3). Above 
It is the narrow band between ordinary and extreme high tides, 
from which the drying sand is being driven landward by the winds; 
it is also vegetationless, or with but stragglers from the upper beach. 
Finally, there is that broad shelf, very well shown in the accom- 
Panying photograph (fig. 4), reached only by the very highest tides, 
Composed of fine quartz sand, intermixed with some gravel and 
occasional flat cobbles; it is covered with scattered driftwood among 
and over which the dry sand is being forever driven, shifted, and 
piled, Thus the new beach offers a barren habitat to plants, for 
it has a mineral-poor soil, drenched often by salt, forever shifting, 
and exposed to the unbroken force of frequent heavy winds. The 
vegetation is plainly responsive to these conditions. It is extremely 
Scanty, the plants growing widely isolated, while many square 
yards do not show any vegetation at all. Thus competition among 
the plants seems not to exist, and the struggle is wholly with the 
