240 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF NEW JERSEY. 
a hundred years old and are not more than five or six inches in 
diameter. Hard and prickly cones are produced in large num- 
bers with imperfectly formed seeds. Quercus pumila,* the 
scrub or bear-oak, and the Jersey laurel} (Kalmia latifolia), are 
abundant. There are also many interesting herbaceous plants 
or low shrubby plants, such as the pyxie, the bearberry and the 
trailing arbutus. 
The only tradition attached to these wind-swept, sun-scorched 
plains is that they have always been treeless. They are often 
dreary and black from the effects of fire, but soon Nature covers 
them with a blanket of green, and they glow in season with the 
bloom of wild flowers. It is always, however, a lonely place, 
and is seldom visited save by natives, who come to gather the 
stumps of the pines, which are full of pitch and excellent for 
fuel. 
The Plains’s condition is mainly due to fires, which are very 
common, and which have doubtless burned for many years, 
probably since the days of the Indian who often passed that way 
en route to the sea-shore. In the Coastal Plain, all gradations 
from a healthy pine forest to the scrubby plains may be seen. 
In fact, through the effects of fire other regions are rapidly 
becoming plains-like in character. This particular region has 
first become plains, because it is hilly and higher in altitude. 
It suffers more from drought, and in consequence has been more 
easily changed by fire. It is not unlikely on the other hand 
that the Plains have never been forested and that for ages 
Nature has been striving to cover them with trees, but fails 
owing to fires and the dryness of the soil. The plains region 
* The scrub or bear oak (Quercus pumila tormerly Q. ilicifolia) is very com-non but never reaches 
the dimensions of a tree. It endures extremely adverse conditions and bears immense quantities of small 
acorns, It is an excellent protection to the soil which would be otherwise bare, although it furnishes 
food for fires. Its mast is relished by swine and other animals. It is sometimes cut for umbrella handles 
and canes. Many of these scrub-oak regions are excellent places for pheasantries, Both the partridge 
(Colinus virginic ) and the ph (Bonasa umbellus) are fond of its acorns. The Heath or 
the Prairie Hen (Zympanuchus cupido), which is now extinct except on Martha’s Vineyard Island, 
inhabited, it is said, the Plains of New Jersey up to 1868. Although not introduced for forestry pur- 
poses, the scrub-oak is quite common in parts of France. 
+ The laurel is a beautiful evergreen, slow-growing shrub, which thrives on barren land in spite of 
fire. The rich white and pink corymbs of this plant mixed with its coriaceous leaves are abundant and 
attractive. In rich damp woods it often reaches the dimensions of a small tree, and its wood, as with 
the crooked limbs of the red cedar, is extensively used in the construction of “rustic work,” a term 
applied to fences, pavilions and garden furniture made of the crooked limbs and roots of several species 
of trees and shrubs. 
