PRELIMINARY REPORT ON PEAT. 
213 
A coastal plain is a region which has been elevated above sea- 
level a comparatively short time, and has not developed any moun¬ 
tains either by folding or erosion, its strata being comparatively 
level* and elevated only a few hundred feet at the most. By far the 
largest and most typical coastal plain in the world is that of the 
southeastern United States, which extends from New York to 
Texas or beyond, and covers about 200,000 square miles, including 
all of Florida and Louisiana, nearly all of Mississippi, over half of 
the Carolina's, Georgia and Alabama, and parts of several other 
states, even as far inland as southern Illinois. Most of this region is 
believed to have been under water at about the same time the 
glaciated region was covered with ice, and it has been very little 
eroded since then, on account of its prevailing low elevation and 
sandy soils. The coastal plain contains many lakes and ponds, 
formed in very different ways from those in the glaciated region, 
but just as well adapted to the accumulation of peat. Estuaries 
too are numerous in the coastal plain, not so much on account of 
its topographic immaturity as for the simple reason that it borders 
the coast. 
Within these regions of immature topography there are of 
course places where climatic or other conditions do not favor the 
formation of peat. For example, in the United States west of 
about the 95th meridian the climate is almost too dry for peat, 
both in the glaciated region* and in the coastal plain. On the 
other hand, there are other parts of the world where the climate 
compels (as one might say) the formation of peat, although the 
topography does not favor it. 
For example, the island of Anticosti, in the Gulf of St. Law¬ 
rence, is said by Twenliofel* to be made up mostly of flat terraces 
which are almost completely covered with peat, and he attributes 
the abundance of peat to the cool, wet, foggy climate. Darwin on 
his voyage around the world in the first half of the 19th century 
found peat exceptionally abundant in Tierra del Fuego and the 
*A report on the pe?at of Iowa recently published in the Annual Report of 
the Iowa Geological Survey for 1908 brings out some interesting facts. Out 
of about 300 samples of peat analyzed, none had less than 15% of ash when 
perfectly dry, and the average was over 25%. This state of affairs is doubtless 
correlated with the rather dry climate (the average annual rainfall for Iowa 
being about 31 inches). A large part of the mineral matter probably comes to the 
peat in the form of dust, for Iowa is said to be especially subject to strong 
westerly winds, which bring large quantities of dust from the arid regions 
farther west as well as from cultivated fields near by. 
*Am. Jour. Sci. 180: 65-71'. 1910. 
