30 HARPER 



figures is that the summer rainfall is nearly twice as great as that 

 of any other season, and over one-third of the total for the year. 

 This seems to "be generally true throughout South Georgia, 1 but 

 not in Middle Georgia 2 and many places farther north. 



Snow does not fall in the Altamaha Grit region every year, 

 and the insignificant amount that does fall has so little effect on 

 the vegetation that it may be dismissed from further consider- 

 ation. Statistics showing the maximum and minimum temper- 

 atures, dates of frost, velocity and direction of the wind, humidity, 

 cloudiness, etc., could have been compiled at the expense of con- 

 siderable time and labor, but they would be of little interest in 

 this connection, since the effects of these factors on the vegeta- 

 tion, in comparison with the mean temperature and rainfall, are 

 not striking. 



VEGETATION. 



General Considerations. 



The Altamaha Grit region is typically a well wooded one. It 

 contains no prairies, lakes, or marshes, and the largest continuous 

 area in it naturally devoid of trees is probably the channel of the 

 Altamaha River, a few hundred feet wide. But while forested 

 throughout, it is typically an unshaded region, for the greater 

 part of the forests consist of pines, which grow far apart 3 and 

 give no shade worth mentioning. Consequently light-loving 

 herbs abound everywhere, and perhaps the most prominent 

 characteristic of the flora as a whole is the prevalence of adap- 

 tations for enduring direct sunlight. For this reason the removal 

 of the forest by lumbermen has little effect on the herbaceous 

 vegetation, a state of affairs quite different from that which ob- 

 tains in the thickly settled and better known parts of the country. 



'See Bull. Torrey Club 27: 414. 1900. (The figures for temperature 

 given there, based on observations made from 1878 to 1884, seem to be 

 a little too high.) 



2 See Bull. Torrey Club 27: 321. 1900. 



3 In the pine-barrens the trees average from 20 to 50 feet apart, and 

 from any point an unobstructed view of about a quarter of a mile can 

 usually be had in almost any direction. 



