BULLETIN 
TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB. 
Vol. XX. Lancaster, Pa., June 17, 1803. No. 6, 
Notes on the Flora of Block Island. 
By W. W. BAILEY. 
It had always been my ambition to botanize an island. I have 
envied Crusoe his leisure and opportunity. The possibility of 
compassing such a task commends it to the ambitious; one does 
not, as on a continent, feel appalled by the vast extent of the field. 
It seems a mere matter of faithful unremitting labor. 
The island is of peculiar construction, indeed a vast terminal 
moraine. There is no rock iz sifu, but only a multitudinous mass 
of bowlders, pebbles, sand and clay. The bowlders are of various 
formation, many of them erratic from a long distance. Black 
magnetic sand is common on the beach. Some of the springs are 
strongly impregnated with iron. The island, viewed from Beacon 
Hill, looks like a petrified sea. It presents a most surprising un- 
dulating surface, and almost every valley or depression holds a 
pond or bog. 
The cliffs of the south shore are very wonderful. Here we 
obtain a natural section and can view the strata, for rain, frost, 
and the action of the sea have denuded the land. I was often 
reminded of scenes in Nevada. 
The mass of the bluff is of pure clay of a pale slate color. 
Over this is a loose deposit of bowlders and pebbles; over these 
again the loam. The cliffs, if one may so call them, have 
weathered into most fanciful shapes; minarets, towers, pinnacles, 
are piled up at random. Often a huge bowlder has lost its bed- 
ding and been hurled into the abyss. Again, one will be noticed 
poised too perilously near the brink; it is a mere question of time 
