1893. ] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 189 
PLANT. DISTRIBUTION AS A FACTOR IN THE INTER- 
PRETATION OF GEOLOGICAL PHENOMENA 
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO LONG 
ISLAND AND VICINITY. 
BY ARTHUR HOLLICK, 
In ‘‘ The Medical Repository,’’ Vol. III., 2d Ed., pp. 325-335, 
and Vol. V., pp. 212-215, published in the years 1805 and 1802, 
respectively, Samuel L. Mitchill indulges in speculations con- 
cerning the mineralogy and geology of Long Island and its 
vicinity. From his articles I quote as follows : 
Long, or Nassau Island. This piece of land, which forms the east 
and south sides of the bay and harbour of New York, extends north-east- 
wardly about 120 miles, and terminates in a fork; the shorter extremity 
of which is called Oyster-Pond [Orient Point], and the longer, Montauk- 
Point. . . . Aridge of hiJls runs almost the entire length of it on the 
north side and completely divides its waters. . . . The face of the 
country, on the one side of this elevation, which may be called the Spine 
of the Island, is exceedingly different from that on the other. On the north 
side it is variegated, uneven, and very much diversified with hills and 
dales; while on the south, little else is discovered by the traveller than a 
flat-surface, sloping very gradually away toward the ocean. 
This will stand as a very excellent general description of 
Long Island topography as we recognize it to-day, but the 
speculations concerning its geology, which follow, reveal the 
curious conceptions of men of science at that time, and cause 
us to smile involuntarily. He says : 
From a survey of the fossils in these parts of the American coast, 
one becomes convinced that the principal share of them is granitical, 
composed of the same sorts of materials as the highest Alps, Pyrennees, Cau- 
casus, and the Andes, and, like them, destitute of metals and petrifactions. 
The occurrence of no horizontal strata, and the frequency of vertical 
layers, led him further to suppose, that these strata are not secondary collec. 
tions of minerals, but are certainly in a state of primeval arrangement. 
What inference remains now to be drawn from this statement of 
facts, but that the fashionable opinion of considering these maritime 
parts of our country as flats, hove up from the deeps by the sea, or brought 
down from the heights by the rivers, stands unsupported by reason, and 
contradicted by experience. 
