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Jersey. Dr. Stone concludes that “it would seem, therefore, that 
we have in the New Jersey and North Carolina Pine Barrens 
the sand and bog elements of a wide-spread American austral 
flora, which has been largely superseded by a more advanced 
element of similar origin over the rest of the coastal plain, both 
elements being richer the farther south we go, while along the 
western edge of the coastal plain, more especially to the north- 
ward, a boreal element has spread down over the fall line to a 
greater or less degree.” 
But Norman Taylor, in his “Flora of the Vicinity of New 
York,” expresses his firm conviction that a geological explana- 
tion of the character of the plants in the Pine Barrens is the only 
one that will elucidate the peculiarly local nature of the flora. 
He quotes Dr. Arthur Hollick and Dr. J. W. Harshberger in 
partial support of his belief. He refers to the Miocene sinking, 
when great quantities of material washed off the highlands were 
laid down to form the Beacon Hill formation, now found capping 
the higher parts of the Barrens. After uplift and erosion, the re- 
gion was again submerged in Pensauken time, so that every- 
thing but the remnants of the Beacon Hill formation was under 
water. He stresses the point that this Beacon Hill formation has 
been out of water since upper Miocene time, and several times 
partly or entirely surrounded by the sea, making a large island 
extending from Farmingdale to Bridgeton, with smaller islands 
northward, including Atlantic Highlands and Beacon Hill. This 
Beacon Hill formation was the oldest in southern New Jersey 
that could have been continuously covered with vegetation. 
“This, it would seem,” he says, “is why the Beacon Hill forma- 
tion is the controlling factor in the origin and present distribu- 
tion of the Pine Barrens. The area of the pine-barrens is not €x- 
actly coextensive with Beacon Hill but the differences are so 
slight that recent and local erosion of the formation would ac- 
count for the failure of the two regions to superimpose, as it 
were.” 
He concludes, therefore, that the “New Jersey pine-barrens 
exist exclusively on this Beacon Hill formation, an area isolated 
by geological processes, and maintaining a relict or climax flora, 
the antiquity of which greatly antedates any of the rest of our 
vegetation hereabouts, so far as permanency of position and 
phytogeographical isolation are concerned.”’ 
