contribute almost nothing to the landscape), and the difficulty 

 of identifying them in the field. The species in each structural 

 class are arranged as nearly as possible in order of abundance, 

 as determined by consolidating the field notes taken on ten or 

 twelve walking trips through the area, mostly in the summer of 

 1916, in the course of which nearly every remaining patch of 

 forest was visited. Although the numerical results obtained 

 for each species are not yet sufficiently complete to warrant con- 

 verting them into percentages, they make possible some signif- 

 icant comparisons between this and neighboring areas, which 

 have not been possible before. It may be stated now, however, 

 that the first tree listed makes up about 39 per cent of the present 

 forest, the second about 19 per cent, and the third about 9 per 

 cent, and the rest follow approximately in a geometrical pro- 

 gression. No such figures can be given for the herbs, on account 

 of the difficulty of comparing the relative abundance of those 

 scattered over wide areas of upland with those which are extremely 

 abundant over limited areas of salt marsh. 



Only the commoner native species are listed, but these prob- 

 ably make up at least nine-tenths of the total vegetation. The 

 several hundred species not listed are either too rare, or too small 

 to make much show, or are confined to unnatural habitats 

 (though some of the last category are treated as native in current 

 manuals). There will be plenty of time to study the weeds after 

 the native plants are all gone. 



The list may be criticized by some taxonomic specialists be- 

 cause some of the plant names are not in accordance with the 

 latest developments in their line. The excuse is first that in 

 rapid reconnoissance work it is simply impossible without long 

 experience in the area studied to identify every species with 

 absolute accuracy in the field, and out of the question to load 

 one's self down with specimens to be studied later. Every plant 

 seen in this sort of work has to be given some sort of name in the 

 field notes, and if several species of such difficult genera as 

 Pmiicum, Sisyrinchium, Viola or Crataegus are seen repeatedly 

 within a short time it is difficult to be sure how many one has 

 seen and to correlate the notes with the specimens. Further- 



