PRELIMINARY REPORT ON PEAT.

Some statistics of more or less interest may be dedti1J from the foreg);ng list of plants. In the first place, jusL- about jo%7 of the angiosperms are monocotyledons. (The proportion for the whole world, counting plants of uplands and lowlands both, seems to be about 2o%. For North America alone the figures are probably 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 because 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 and 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 i9% 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 World. 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.

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