IT seems to be generally implied, and in some cases expressly stated, by writers on ecological plant geography that the sands of the seashore, even at some distance above high tide, are impregnated with sodium chlorid and other readily soluble salts in quantity sufficient to determine the character of the vegetation. Thus, Contejean2 gives the reader the impression that his second zone of strand vegetation in southwestern France, that of the beach proper, flourishes in a saline soil. Warming3 writes: The vegetation of the sand strand . . . . is a halophytic vegetation, because sand along the sea contains salt and the salty ground water comes close to the surface. Schimper,' describing the Barringtonia formation of trees and shrubs that occupies the higher beaches in tropical Asia and is separated from the high tide limit by a strip of bare sand devoid of vegetation, states: It is the salt content of the soil which [here], as in the mangrove [formation] has called forth the most varied means of protection against transpiration. To the same factor is perhaps to be ascribed the rarity of thick stemmedi lianas, growths which only flourish when the conditions for water-absorption are most favorable. Again, in his P.flanzengeographie (p. 688), he writes: The cliffs Lalong the seashore] possess a less distinctly halophytic flora than the sandy and especially the marshy strand-clearly implying his belief that the sand strand is a halophytic environment. On the other hand, Maasart,5 who has investigated the vegetation of the Belgian strand, quotes an analysis of dune sand, ' Published by permission of the Secretary of Agriculture. 2Gdographie Botanique 56, 6o. i88I. 30ekologische Pflanzengeographie 304. i896. 4Indomalayische Strandflora 68, 73. I89I. 5 Bull. Soc. Roy. Bot. BeIg. 32' :-. i893. (Mdm. p. 8).