152 Rhodora [JULY 
uniflora,? Eupatorium leucolepis,? Gnaphalium purpureum, and Coreop- 
sis rosea. 
In 1893, Dr. Arthur Hollick, in a significant paper entitled Plant 
Distribution as a Factor in the Interpretation of Geological Phenomena, 
with Special Reference to Long Island and Vicinity,’ accounted for the 
presence on Long Island, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket and Cape 
Cod of the Pine Barren plants by demonstrating that after the reced- 
ing of the Pleistocene ice there existed a land connection along the 
shoreward margin of the old coastal plain, which now forms the 
coastal bench extending gradually offshore until at a depth of about 
100 fathoms — 600 feet — it abruptly meets the deeper waters of the 
open Atlantic. Hollick’s statements bear so directly on our problem 
that I quote freely from them: — 
“During Cretaceous and Tertiary times a series of fresh water or 
estuary and marine deposits (clays, sands, gravels and marls) were 
laid down along the eastern borders of the North American continent. 
About the close of the Miocene, or the beginning of the Pliocene 
period, an era of elevation began which finally raised them hundreds, 
in places thousands of feet, above their present level, forming a vast 
coastal plain, which extended over the entire area where we now 
find them, and for a considerable distance eastward, into what 1s 
now part of the bed of the Atlantic ocean. On the land side this 
plain was bounded by the crystalline and Triassic rocks of Connecticut, 
southern New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and southward. . 
The evidences of its extension northward around Rhode Island ind 
Massachusetts are now almost obliterated, but there seems to be 
every reason to believe that its land limits were approximately the 
coast line of the present day. .. . Further north than Massachusetts, 
are found beds of Pre-Pleistocene deposits, the uppermost being bright 2 red page 
Kennedy's station for Juncus brachycarpus is at ‘‘Egypt,” where th oo 
clays th of ‘‘ Egyp 
half-mile along the cliff face.” It is desirable to watch at Third Cliff for the Juncus 
and other Coastal —— species and it _ be that remnants of the Coast tal Pla 
ton than at Third C 
1 See Wiegand, Honecus, xi. 83 (1 an anit Fernald, Ruopvora, xii. 191 (1910). 
*See F. T. Lewis, Ruopora, vii. 186 (1905); and J. F. Collins, Raopora, xii. 
£6 
(1910). 
3 ae gldago leucolepis was collected nag Kingston, Massachusetts, by W. P. 
Rich and C. H. Knowlton, August 30, 1 
‘Trans ; xi. prego (1893). 
