Carolina bays

rdf:langString Carolina bays

rdf:langString Carolina bays are elliptical to circular depressions concentrated along the Atlantic seaboard within coastal New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and north Florida. In Maryland, they are called Maryland basins. Within the Delmarva Peninsula, they and other coastal ponds are also called Delmarva bays. The name "Carolina bay" is sometimes attributed to the writings of the English explorer John Lawson who explored North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia during the early 1700s. This attribution, however, is not correct. Lawson described visiting a swamp that contained bay trees, but there is no indication that he wanted to name the swamp with the word "bay". Furthermore, Lawson said that this swamp had steep margins and that he could see mountains to the west from the vicinity of the swamp. Thus, it seems more likely that this swamp was an inter-dune depression among the Carolina Sandhills, rather than a Carolina bay. Nevertheless, bay trees are present in some Carolina bays. The earliest scientific description of Carolina bays is by Glenn (1895), who used the term 'bay' (which he described as "lake-like expanses") to refer to these features near the town of Darlington, South Carolina. Glenn (1895) put quotation marks around the word "bay" but he did not use the phrase "Carolina bay." A subsequent publication by Melton and Schriever (1933) used the phrase: The Carolina "Bays" (with quotation marks around the word "Bays"). Later, MacCarthy (1937) published a paper entitled "The Carolina Bays" and he used this phrase throughout the publication (without quotation marks, and with a capital "B" for the word "Bays").