acid, and white clover, even if present, yields little nectar, as in eastern Massachusetts. Raspberry and fireweed are the common honey plants on the neutral or acid soils of the Adirondack and White Mountains and on many other rugged areas. The dry barrens of New Brunswick, the blueberry barrens of Maine, and the out-wash plains of Massachusetts and Rhode Island have acid soils and produce an abundance of blueberries and huckleberries. The soils of the many swamps and bogs are likewise acid. Goldenrod and sumac are common over this region.

2. The Appalachian Highlands, as the result of the abundant and uniform rainfall, are covered with a magnificent forest of hardwood trees, unrivaled elsewhere in the United States. The pine trees of the New England region are almost wholly absent; and instead of a few species of trees there are several hundred. Within an area of one square mile 75 different kinds have been counted. In western North Carolina, where this forest reaches its highest development, the size and variety of the trees are surpassed only in tropical woodlands. Trees, as would be expected, are the principal sources of honey, as basswood, tulip tree, sourwood, sumac, locust, redbud, magnolia, maples, honey locust, holly, willows, sour gum, and persimmon. There is also a great variety of shrubs. The flora of this region is a very ancient one, and contains many types of plants not found elsewhere in North America. The Appalachian Mountains were elevated above the sea at the close of the coal period, and this region is thus much older than the Coastal Plain.

3. The Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plain was the last portion of the United States to rise above the waters of the ocean. The Atlantic Plain is separated from the Appalachian region by a well-defined escarpment known as the “fall line,” which is the eastern limit of the hardwood forest. The soils are largely sandy, and a great pine forest extends from Virginia to eastern Texas, known as the pine barrens. Thousands of acres of marine and river swamps occur in this region on which gallberry, black titi, black tupelo, and white tupelo flourish. Only plants adapted to an acid soil will grow in these swamps, and the clovers are consequently absent. Another characteristic of this region is the annual cultivation of millions of acres of cotton, a plant which requires 200 frostless days. Florida was the last portion of North America to rise above the ocean. The Coastal Plain, which is easily distinguished from every other region in the United States, includes southern New Jersey, Delaware, eastern Maryland, eastern North Carolina, southern Georgia, Florida, southern Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, southern Arkansas, and eastern Texas.

4. The Central Lowlands or Upper Mississippi Valley is largely a grassland known as the prairies. Much of the valley during the Upper Cretaceous was an inland sea; and after the water receded large areas were occupied by temporary lakes. At the close of the Glacial Period thousands of square miles in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee were covered by the wind with a fine fertile soil known as loess. The prairies owe their origin to the fineness of this soil, in which the grasses have formed a dense turf on which it is difficult for trees to encroach. Throughout this region white clover is a very important honey plant, and in favorable seasons is the source of an enormous surplus. Sweet clover also succeeds well over much of this area. In the river valleys the flowers of many hardy Compositae display great sheets of brilliant colors, as Spanish needles, sunflowers, asters, goldenrod, crownbeard, Rudbeckia, and gum-plant. Near the center of the Mississippi Valley is the upland region called the Ozark Plateau.

5. The Great Plains is a well-known and well-defined belt of land with an average width of about 300 miles, lying between the Mississippi Lowlands and the Rocky Mountains, and extending from Canada to the Rio Grande River. During a