Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/387

Rh the clearing of the country this last is undoubtedly the most favorable method of holding territorial rights.

The southern portion of New Jersey presents a unique area in the Middle Atlantic States. In all its essential features—topographical, geological, and also in certain biological aspects—it is related to the region farther south, being the northward extension of the Atlantic coast plain. The most characteristic feature is the "pine-barren" region that reaches from the foot of the higher country to the maritime marshes and beaches that immediately fringe the coast. The tourist journeying to the seaside resorts south of Long Branch has the monotonous sandy waste of the pine barrens for a landscape. Here and there the white, loamy soil gives place to loose beds of yellow gravel. Sluggish streams of water, stained dark brown from the leachings of the cedar stumps, meander through swampy jungles. The landscape varies somewhat with the character of the trees in different places. In some sections the tall pitch pine forms vast stretches of forest, while in others a low and scanty woodland growth of the "Jersey" or scrub pine and several species of scrub oak prevails. The cedar swamps that lie scattered in the course of the numerous streams form a remarkable feature of this interesting region. Dense jungles of white cedar growing out of the dark water and surrounded by an impenetrable undergrowth of tangled vines and brier thickets form a harbor for many wild animals and birds. The tropical effect of these cedar swamps is heightened by broad-leaved magnolias and the long festoons of graybeard moss that fringe the branches. In these dark recesses, and through the pine barrens generally, the botanist finds many plants which belong to a more southern flora. Indeed, all the way along the coast from New Jersey to Maine, in favorable situations, representatives of distinctively southern forms may be found which in these higher latitudes do not occur inland. The mockingbird, which is highly characteristic of the Louisianian fauna, has been met with as a straggler during the breeding season in the New Jersey pine barrens; and in the cedar swamps near Cape May the hooded warbler, a typical Carolinian species, breeds regularly. In times long past the rare and curious Carolina parroquet, now known only from the Gulf region, was an occasional visitor as far north as the lower Delaware and its tributaries.

River valleys are topographical features of great importance in determining the distribution of living beings. The conditions of greater humidity and higher average temperature that prevail in the bottom lands along a river's course, as compared with the higher ground of the upland districts which forms its watershed, is strikingly illustrated in the case of Carolinian birds. Certain