Tar aboard his scalloper Ruth Lea from sample RI. 1 is from a_ peat-covered area reported to be at least 1 km? in nent (Spartina) and a freshwater one (twigs and pollen of spruce, fir, and ples are from outcrops of the sea floor. Other samples are smail (10 g orless), perhaps because of washing during the dredging operation. Although some small samples may not represent in situ. deposits, they are generally from so near the sites of larger samples that only a short distance of transport is 59 m on Georges Bank. The material contained both a salt-marsh compopine; and frustules of freshwater dia- toms) (7/2). Subsequently, additional samples of freshwater peat were obtained in trawlings by Captain Lepire, and others were found in samples of bottom sediments collected for biological and geological studies by ships of the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries and of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution—U.S. Geological Survey program. One peat was supplied by T. J. M. Schopf (Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass.) from a dredging made by A. E. Verrill in 1874. Other samples were found within cores from the sea floor taken for engineering studies and for investigations of pollen succession. These peats from the sea floor are supplemented and compared with others obtained in borings made on land or in freshwater ponds during studies of extent, indicate that many of the sam- suggested. Sample BT 9A consists of only 2 cm of thinly interbedded or-ganic debris and detrital sand; thus some transportation occurred prior to deposition at the coring site. Most of the samples consist only of fine-grained fibrous organic material packed into thinly bedded masses containing few or no visible inorganic grains. For convenience here, this type of peat is given the general term ma- trix, whereas the obviously reworked organic fragments occurring in domi- nantly inorganic sedimentare called debris. Samples RL 1 and RL 2 (Fig. 3B) contain pieces of wood as long as 30 cm, which are partly to completely surrounded by matrix; sample G 2198 is a piece of wood that at the time of recovery was thought to have come from a deeply submerged peat deposit. Twenty-three freshwater peat samples are listed in Table 1. Analyses of pol- len content, all in the form of pollen diagrams, are reported in the literature for eleven of these samples. Table 2 lists our readings of the more diagnostic pollens from these diagrams. In addition, we made new counts for sev- en samples and listed them in Table 42° postglacial history (Table 1). The many samples materially extend the information that was previously available on the distribution, nature, and age of freshwater peat. The distribution pattern of the peats (Table 1; Figs. 1 and 2) shows a high degree of correlation with areas that were glaciated. This is reasonable in viewof the ability of glaciers to form depressions by both erosion and deposition. Especially striking is the pres- ence of four samples bordering Great South Channel (Fig. 2). The fabric and composition of till on nearby Cape Cod indicate that a tongue of the Wisconsin glacier moved through this chan- 441° nel (13). Some of the samples, how- ever, are from unglaciated regions, and presumably they are representative of deposits on poorly drained topography bordering estuaries and lagoons. Many of the samples of peat from the sea floor are small, but those collected aboard the Ruth Lea had estimated weights (on an air-dry basis) as great as 100 kg (Table 1). The samples were irregular in shape, but they broke easily into flat slabs because of their bedded structure. Usually one surface, considered the top one, is more or less riddled with the holes of boring organisms, chiefly the pelecypod Zirfaea crispata L. [Fig. 3 and (12, Fig. 2)]. The presence of borings on only one side of a ‘slab, the fragile nature of the peat, the large size of some pieces (to 60 cm), and the fact that at least 8 DECEMBER 1967 po 70° 20 KM BS __. NEN 69° 40° Fig. 2. Positions of peat samples (closed circles) and of oyster shells and Texas Tower No. 3 (open circles) superimposed upon the topography of the sea floor off Cape Cod (see crosshatched area of Fig. 1). Contour interval is 20 m to a depth of 200 m; contour interval at greater depths is 200 m [from Uchupi (41)]. 3ye . © 1303