127 



If this place could be visited in spring doubtless several addi- 

 tional species could be found; and if there are any southward- 

 facing bluffs of marble they should have a rather different vege- 

 tation. It would be very desirable to make additional explora- 

 tions in the neighborhood before the quarrymen have extended 

 their operations much further, for every marble outcrop is 

 liable to exploitation sooner or later, and their aggregate area 

 is very small. 



Two other plants seen near Tate deserve mention here, 

 though they have little or nothing to do with the marble out- 

 crops. In dry pine woods {Finns echinata and P. Taeda) 

 about half way between the railroad station and the valley of 

 Long Swamp Creek, one of the commonest plants at the time 

 of my visit was a form of Coreopsis Oemleri. That species 

 usually has opposite leaves three-parted to the base, giving an 

 appearance of whorls of six lanceolate leaves. But at this partic- 

 ular locality many of the plants had the uppermost leaves, and 

 sometimes most of the leaves, reduced to a single lobe. (A differ- 

 ent variety of the same species will be mentioned farther on.) 

 Associated with it was Aster surculosus, a species I have not 

 met many times. Specimens of both were collected, and have 

 been distributed to a few herbaria. 



The other kind of rock outcrop to be described is at the 

 inner edge of the coastal plain, not far from the eastern border 

 of the state. In traveling on the Georgia Railroad in the early 

 years of the present century I had several times noticed in 

 cuts and elsewhere in the vicinity of Harlem, in Columbia 

 County, some rock of a peculiar purplish hue. As this is very 

 close to the fall line, and as rock of very similar color and un- 

 doubted Triassic age occurs along the fall line (as well as farther 

 inland) in North Carolina, I at first imagined this to be an 

 unrecorded outlier of Triassic (which is otherwise unknown 

 in Georgia). But inquiry among geologists and examination 

 of geological literature threw no light on the subject. 



There the matter rested for over twenty years, until on 

 visits to Harlem in June, 1927, August, 1928, and June. 1929, 

 I had opportunity to look into it more closely. The purple 

 rock is evidently one of the coastal plain deposits, for one must 

 go north from Harlem a mile or so before encountering frag- 

 ments of crystalline rock mixed with the unconsolidated sands 



