Northern Pine Barren-Strand District. 415 
localities and under varying surroundings. The marshy hollows of the trans- 
verse dune complex at Sea Side Park resemble, physiognomically, a typic 
pine barren swamp in its constituent elements. Such a one, explored, 
yielded Juncus effusus, Panicum amarum, Drosera filiformis, the cranberry 
Vaccinium macrocarpon, as the character plant of such situations, while near 
by, as already mentioned, grew other pine-barren forms such as Sassafras, 
Be dlicıfolia, O. phellos etc. 
A dune valley, which has not been brought down to the level of the ground 
water, may consist of pure sand bottom and sides without vegetation, or if 
plants be present, they are confined to the area of drifted sand and not to the 
area that is wind-swept. In such a hollow, the drifted sand supports three 
character plants, viz., Myrwa carolinensis, Solidago sempervirens and Hud- 
sonia tomentosa. The sides of the irregular basin, not wind-swept, support the 
marram grass, and an occasional clump of wax-berry. If the sand is still 
farther transported by the wind, there remain hillocks of dry sand in the 
center of a damp stretch on the level of the ground water. Sometimes the 
bottom of the hollow forms a level trough of wet sand, surrounded by sun- 
dried sand on allsides. Such a hollow is tenanted by three character plants. 
The wet sand supports a continuous growth of Scirpus debilis and the side 
of the dune trough, Panicum virgatum, a grass which may be called a tussock 
grass, because it does not form a continuous turf, but grows in clumps more 
or less isolated from each other. In the higher drier sand of the depression, 
before the slopes of the dunes of the dune complex are reached, there grows 
another character plant, Solidago sempervirens. We have, therefore, a re- 
placement of the original dune occupants, viz., Ammophila, Hudsonia, Myrica, 
by three plants, Scirpus, Panicum and Solidago. If this process is carried 
still farther, then we have a larger number of marsh-loving species appearing 
in the wet sand of the basin-shaped or elongated depression. 
The lower damp, marshy 2 are covered with a growth of Seirpus debilis, from which _ 
arises Typha latifolia and a tall sedge, Scirpus sylvaticus. The higher still damp areas support 
Cyperus Nuttallii and Juncus sp., aitonc these two plants are, as a rule, not found in association. 
e islands, or knolls of sand, which remain in the marshy area are held in situ by Myrica 
carolinensis, a ophila arenaria and Solidago sempervirens. These three plants grow together 
side by side. Solidago SUR is ‚found where the sand is damp. The sand marsh is fringed 
directly with Ammophila arenaria, Solidago sempervirens and an occasional Myrica shrub, while 
outside of these the slopes of a dunes are windswept and destitute of vegetation. In the degra- 
dation of a dune and the formation of a wind-swept hollow, we have a succession of associations 
which are ee the ultimate rg, that of a mesophytic thicket. The transition, noticed 
the dune complex, at Sea Side Park, is from an intensely BEE association of species to 
ne xerophytes, and from u in turn to xerophytic shrubs and trees culminating in 
a mesophytie thicket filling the extent of the original dune valley. 
Thicket Formation. “The thicket formation developed typically at Sea Side 
Park and Ocean City reaches its greatest proportions at Wildwood. At South 
Atlantic City it covers a long, high dune, which is situated, as an island, in 
the middle of the salt marsh which everywhere surrounds it. It will, therefore, 
