PRELIMINARY REPORT ON PEAT. 
357 
Some statistics of more or less interest may be deduced from the 
foregoing list of plants. In the first place, just, about 4 0J0 of 
the angiosperms are monocotyledons. (The proportion for the 
whole world, counting plants of uplands and lowlands both, seems 
to be about 20%. For North America alone the figures are prob¬ 
ably a little higher.) This accords well with the prevailing belief 
that monocotyledons are especially characteristic of new regions 
and wet places. 
Of 235 native species whose ranges are pretty well known, about 
57% are confined to the coastal plain, at least as far as their 
distribution on the North American continent is concerned. This 
57%, however, includes quite a number which do not approach the 
fall-line (inland boundary of the coastal plain) at all, some of 
them being confined to the immediate vicinity of the coast be¬ 
cause they require salt water, and others to South Florida be¬ 
cause they require a warm climate. Many of the latter are 
equally at home in the West Indies, where there is no 
coastal plain. About 8% grow both in the glaciated region 
and coastal plain, but are not known in the intervening Metamorphic 
arid Paleozoic regions. About 16% occur both in the coastal 
plain and the highlands, but not as far north as the glaciated region. 
Some of these, however, are very rare outside of the coastal plain, 
having been seen only once or twice in the metamorphic region of 
Georgia or Alabama (where this region has its southernmost 
extension). About 19% are widely distributed in the eastern 
United States, being found in the glaciated region and coastal 
plain and many places between. 
Considering .now their distribution outside of the United States, 
about 21% (of these same 235) are found in the West Indies or 
elsewhere in the American tropics, but not in the Old Woriel. 
About 3% occur in Europe or Asia but not in tropical America, 
and 5% are essentially cosmopolitan. The remaining 71% are 
confined to North America, as far as known. 
