458 LONG ISLAND : TIOGA AND WESTCHESTER COUNTIES, N. Y. 



grow splendidly if set out for forest growth. — {Elias Lewis, jr., Brook- 

 lyn, N. Y.) 



The south side of Long Island is low, and elevated but a few feet 

 above the sea. It is mostly sandy, but in some parts very fertile. The 

 north side is rough, ranging from near sea-level to 200 feet above sea- 

 level. The native trees are oaks of various species {Quercus alba, Q. 

 corimea, var. tinctoria, Q. ohfusiloba ; pitcb-pine, hickories, Carya mi- 

 crocarjm, and G. tomentosa). and red cedar, which occur throughout the 

 whole island. The locust, tulip, poplar, white-elm, and chestnut, which 

 are common in Queens County, become less eastward, to Eiver Head, 

 70 miles from New York, but east of this do not grow. The locust is 

 destroyed by a borer, which, of late years, is also working on the native 

 trees in other parts of the island. The oak, if left to proper age, would 

 be suitable for ship-timber, but is usually cut when thirty years old for 

 cord-wood. The pine is also cut for fuel, but sometimes for charcoal. 

 Hickorv is chiefly used for wagon-making. — {Edwin 8. Miller, Wading 

 Eiver, N. Y.) 



Tioga County. — This county is generally hilly, except the narrow 

 valley of the Susquehanna, and of several tributaries. These valleys 

 are about 800 feet above tide, and the hills from 500 to 700 feet higher. 

 In clearing lands of hemlock, beech, birch, maples, white oak, chestnut, 

 and several other hard woods, the succeediug growth, if allowed to 

 come up, is pine, hemlock, sugar-maple, black birch, and beech, all of 

 the former kinds, and especially the sumac and quaking asp. The latter 

 is frequently killed by borers, after getting from 30 to 45 teet high, and 

 C to 7 inches in diami ter. The wood is bored in every direction. Several 

 indications show that if this country were abandoned, it would in fifty 

 years be a dense wilderness. White pines will sometimes get started 

 in fields, and we have a number of second-growth pine groves 35 to 45 

 years old, now large enough for 2 to 3 saw-logs to each tree. We have 

 no evidence of a change of climate since settlement, except the failure 

 of streams. We have no greater droughts than we had when the 

 couutry was three-fourths wooded, I remember seeing when a boy a 

 more severe drought than at any time since. There has been no forest 

 planting, but every ^ear more or less clearing, the timber being cut off 

 and burned. 



Some 55 or GO years ago, a high hill 3 miles south of this in Wind- 

 ham, Pa., was covered with large hemlock trees, that were all killed in 

 one year by the worms, to the amount of hundreds of acres. Some years 

 ago the hemlock was killed in patches over two or three towns, by a 

 kind of caterpillar that ate off the leaves, so that the trees died. — 

 {Robert Hoicell, Nichols, N. Y.) 



West Chester County. — The late Horace Greeley, in speaking of 

 the available opportunity for timber-culture in this county, remarked: 



I am confident that ten tbou?aud acres might to-raorrow be given back to forest with 

 profit to the owners and advantage to all its inhabitants. It is a tiuit-growiug, milk- 

 producing, truck-farming county, closely adjoining the greatest city of the New World ; 

 hence one wherein land can be cultivated as iirofitably as almost anywhere else. Yet 

 I am satisfied that half its surface may be more advantageously devoted to timber 

 than to grass or tillage. Nay, I doubt that one acre in a hundred of locky land — that 

 is, land ribbed (r dotted with rocks that the bar or the rock-hook cannot lift from their 

 beds, and which will not, as yet, iiay to blast — is now tilled to profit, or ever will be until 

 it shall be found advisable to clear them utterly of stone breaking through or rising 

 within two feet of the surface. The time will doubtless arrive in which many fields 

 will pay for clearing of stone that would not to-day. These, I urge, should be given 

 up to wood now, and kept wooded until the hour shall have struck for ridding them of 

 every impediment to the steady progress of both the surface and the subsoil plow. 



Were all the rocky crests and rugged acclivities of our county bounteously wooded 



