213 
loam, underlaid to great depths by quartz gravel and sand dis- 
posed in small and thin strata, as if deposited by rapid currents. 
Through this material the water of rainfall rapidly 
descends 
to the spring level. 
This perfect drainage together with the 
thinness of the surface soil and the general climate largely de- 
termines the character of the flora on the Plains and the Pine- 
barrens to the eastward.” 
Vhe Plains have been more recently scucscd by Roland M. 
Elarpet 4 (his) prairie.’ he says’ (p: 2/7), 
the ‘Hempstead Plains,’ is mentioned in a 
seriptive works, but long | 
known locally as 
few historical and de- 
efore geography became a science it 
had ceased to excite the wonder of the inhabitants, few of whom 
at the present time realize that there is not another place exactly 
like it in the world. . . . The upland vegetation of the Plains com- 
prises about four species of trees, a dozen shrul 
Ss, sixty herbs, 
and a few mosses, lichens and fungi. 
Our prairie is subject 
frequent fires, strong wind, and exces- 
sive evaporation, like the western ones, but these factors are the 
result rather than the cause of treelessness, so that they could 
hardly have determined the prairie in the beginning nor fixed its 
to a good deal of grazing, 
present boundaries. ... Even if no more of this land were 
taken up in farms, the continued growth of New York City 
bound to cover it all with houses sooner or later.” 
is 
‘ast of the Hempstead Plains and covering the larger part of 
the island stretches a great waste of pine-covered barren, inter- 
rupted here and there by solid and impenetrable thickets of dwarf 
oak (Quercus tlicifolia, Q. prinoides), scarcely more than knee 
high (fig. 2) ; at intervals, as in the region south of Port Jefferson 
(fig. 3) there are openings of clean white sand, inhabited by the 
blue lupine, clumps of yellow Hudsonia, and trailing vines of 
“deer food” (Arctostaphylos Uva-Ursi) ; an area comparatively 
recently described by Thompson (p. 24) as “almost entirely 
its wild native state anc 
— 

_ 
111 
no house or hut is to be seen for many 
miles.” These barrens, extending eastward until they meet the 
open downs of the seacoast, have an appearance identical with the 
PEE 
The Hempstead Plains. A Natural Prairie on Long Island. Bull. 
Fake Geog. Soc. 43: 351-300. 1911. The Hempstead Plains of Long 
Island. Torreya 12: 277, 1912. The vegetation of the Hempstead p 
Mem. Torrey Bot. Club 17: 262-286. 1918 
aitts. 
