209 
and red, walnut trees, chestnut trees which yield store of mast for 
swine, also red maples, cedars, sarsifrage [ ?sassafras], Beach, 
Holly, Hazel with many more ... in May you should see the 
Woods and Fields so curiously bedeckt with Roses and an in- 
4. 
es 
numerable multitude of delightful Flowers not only pleasing to 
the eye but smell... . That you may behold Nature contending 
4 
With Art and striving to equal if not excel many Gardens in Eng- 
1 embowered lanes, 
—_— 
land... . One may drive for hours throug 
between thickets of alder and sumach, overhung with chestnut and 
oak and pine, or through groves gleaming in spring with the white 
bloom of the dogwood, glowing in fall with liquidambar and 
peperidge, with sassafras, and the yellow light of the smooth- 
shafted tulip tree.” 
These accounts by Denton give a general idea of the vegetation 
of Long Island, although there is great variation in the different 
parts. Long Island is dominated by the great moraine left by the 
ice sheet of the Wisconsin period,! extending from Montauk to 
any 
Brooklyn. On the moraine and northward to Long Island Sound, 
the island, especially the western part, was undoubtedly heavily 
wooded with large timber of an aspect similar to the forests of 
the Connecticut coast. South of the moraine the huge outwash 
plain of sand and gravel provided only the most sterile types of 
os 
soil and was covered mostly with the pitch pine, forming a con- 
tinuation of the pine barrens of New Jersey. According to re- 
ports by Mather and Brockett,? the soil of Kings County was 
the soil of this 
“ 
more fertile than other parts of the Island: thus 
county 1s possessed of greater natural fertility, than that of the 
other portions of the Island, and it is highly cultivated. It is well 
adapted to horticulture, and fruits and flowers arrive at great 
perfection. The grape is extensively cultivated throughout the 
According to Stiles * the earli- 
county. Little timber is found.” 
1A tablet is placed at a portion of this moraine in the Brooklyn Botanic 
Garden. See Gager and Antevs. The Story of Our Boulders: Glacial 
Geology of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. BrookryNn Bort. Garp. RECORD 
21: 165-207. 1922. 
2 Mather, J. H. and Brockett, L. P. Geography of the State of New 
York, p. 152. Hartford. 1847. 
8 Stiles, Henry R. A History of the City of Brooklyn. Vol. 1, p. 23. 
3rooklyn. 1867. 
