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Cayuga Lake (the Montezuma Marsh region) ; sand plains as 

 at the mouth of the Mohawk and the Saranac, lake filled basins, 

 etc. Contrast this naked terrain with the conditions found 

 by the earliest explorers and colonists. Certainly the greater 

 portion of it was occupied by a type of vegetation which for 

 certain reasons (not to be specified in this summary) is called 

 by some botanists climax vegetation. The sand plains were 

 occupied by approximately pure stands of white pine. A vast 

 amount of filling had taken place in glacial lakes and filled 

 streamways as shown by peat and muck deposits. The effects 

 of plant invasion may well be compared with the effects of glacial 

 invasion so far as concerns the building up of a covering upon 

 the terrain. 



Developmental aspects of the vegetation may be studied at 

 the present time. These studies throw light upon the course 

 of events broadly indicated in the foregoing paragraph. 



1. What may be called the hydrarch succession of vegetation 

 (the filling of glacial lakes, of filled or blocked drainage channels 

 and of tide marsh flats) has not been completed or carried to a 

 climax stage. Successive stages recognized and more or less 

 thoroughly studied by different botanists in this and other 

 states described as to general distribution and conditions in 

 New York State. Two courses of development stand out 

 especially: (i) the normal sequence from submerged aquatics 

 through marsh meadow to swamp forest coincident with more 

 or less complete aeration (oxygenation) of the substratum and 

 consequent freedom from (presumably) toxic substances. (2) 

 The bog sequence coincident with imperfect drainage and oxy- 

 genation and the (presumed) consequent accumulation of toxic 

 substances or at any rate of conditions resulting in great dwarfing 

 even of the specially resistent bog species (e.g., black spruce, 

 Chamaedaphne, etc.), and attended apparently at times with 

 an almost complete check of vegetation development (e.g., 

 Bean Pond near Cranberry Lake). 



2. What may be called the xerarch succession of vegetation 

 (upon naked rock, large boulders, sand deltas, etc.) which 

 although they may have reached the climax stage in some cases, 



