FIELD AND FOREST. 121 



The oaks are a curiously stunted form of Quercus rubra, which the 

 sterile soil and the high winds prevailing on the island prevent from 

 attaining a height of more than fifteen or twenty feet. 



One spot on Martha's Vineyard, famous as a Campmeeting ground 

 and summer watering place, is called "Oak Bluffs," from a grove of 

 these trees. The poor things do their best to imitate their lofty breth- 

 ren of mid New England but the effort is a great failure. 



Everything in the shape of trees and shrubs is stunted. On a visit 

 to the Vineyard during the past season, the writer found, among other 

 dwarfed plants, the most comical little specimens of Rhus cofiallina. 

 This shrub in the interior of Massachusets, grows to the height of a 

 man's head, but here it forms full flowering trees barely six inches high, 

 as though it grew in a Japanese Conservatory, or in the Arctic region. 

 No better proof of the poverty of the soil could be given than the fact 

 that most of the uplands are covered with Cladonia rangiferina, and 

 on acres of disused fields and pastures the foot craunches this brittle 

 lichen as though it were a crust of snow. 



The herbaceous flora of the district could not under such circum- 

 stances, be supposed to be very abundant, but what there is is quite 

 peculiar Instead of being northern in character, as from the latitude 

 we might expect, it is essentiaely southern. There is hardly a plant to 

 be met with which is not also found at least as far south as the Pine 

 Barrens of New Jersey, and much of the vegetation occurs all the way 

 to Virginia, and even farther south. 



On the salt and brackish marshes we get Cyperus Nuttallii, in fine, large 

 specimens Scirpus Olneyi, Carexfoenea, Discopleura capillacea, Salicom 

 fruticosa, var. ambigua, Hibiscus moscheutos and Iris Virginica. Four of 

 these find their northern limit at this point. The Hibiscus is as large 

 and showy as on the brackish marshes of the eastern shore in Maryland. 



On the same marshes we found last summer that curious sedge Eleo- 

 charis rostellata, which, for want of a better English name, may be 

 called the Walking Sedge. In crossing the moors, our feet were fre- 

 quently entangled in what at first we thought must be strings fastened 

 to the ground, but what proved to be the rooted sterile stems of this 

 sedge. On a single plant were counted a colony of nearly thirty culms 

 which had all taken root, and many of the offshoots had already thrown 

 up new stems, The plant appears to propagate itself mainly in this 

 manner, although it does not lack for fruit on the fertile culms. 



