REPORT ON FORESTS. 245 
region called the River-swamp, which is seldom completely 
flooded. Here, several of the trees which grow in southern New 
Jersey reach their optimum. Many trees which thrive in water 
in the south cannot live in the Swamp-lands in the north, because 
of their coldness, but thrive on the upland. By the term swamp 
is merely meant a wet, muddy region, covered with a wild growth 
of trees and bushes. 
To wet, almost treeless or treeless areas, the terms savanna, 
morass, bog, slough and marsh are applicable. The term 
savanna is usually applied to lowlands covered with grasses and 
other herbaceous plants ; the terms morass and bog, to extremely 
spongy, sphagnaceous lands; and the term marsh, to the soft, 
muddy deposits around and along bodies of both salt and fresh 
water. Some are inclined to restrict the term marsh to those 
areas formed in salt water. There is little reason for this, since 
salt and fresh marshes are essentially alike in formation. All 
these terms are, unfortunately, exceedingly elastic in meaning. 
«A cedar swamp, for instance, is a swamp while covered with 
trees, but when cut over, cleared and planted with cranberries, 
it becomes a bog. 
Much of the swamp-land in the Coastal Plain of New Jersey, 
although merely moist and extremely fertile, will probably 
remain in woods for many years to come, becanse of the diffi- 
culty in clearing it. A swamp bottom consists of the forest 
detritus of ages, and is a matted mass of roots, stumps and tree 
trunks. 
The swamp-land may, for the sake of convenience, be divided 
into cedar swamps and deciduous or hardwood swamps. 
The white cedar (Chamecyparis thyotdes),* the finest soft 
wood of the region, grows in dense pure forests. The tree is 
tall, straight and sharp-pointed. The bases of the crowns meet 
to form a solid canopy. The trees grow so close that one sup- 
ports another, and when a few are cut, or felled by storm, others 
in the neighborhood, deprived of their support, fall in every 
direction. The limbs are often festooned with a gray lichen 
(U'snea barbata), the pendant tufts of which are favorite nesting 
places of the Parula warbler (Compsothlypsis americana). ‘These 
* This tree should not be confounded with the white cedar or arbor vite of the north (7huya occi- 
dentalts). ‘ 
