No. 216.] 691 



venerable representative of an age, and generations that are past. 

 That part, along and through which the Railroad runs, that which 

 many who now pass over it, and without a knowledge of these facts, 

 supposed to be barren, and say, that the trees and pines now grow- 

 ing there, are of a stinted growth, a dwarf kind; that the soil is in- 

 capable of producing larger. There can be no greater mistake, no 

 greater error, yet this is the error that is promulgated and perpetu- 

 ated. That the appearance along the line of the road is dreary and 

 desolate, is admitted, and this appearance can be explained without 

 any reference to the soil being barren or deficient, the difference in 

 the height and size of the pines now growing there, being all sizes, 

 from three feet to sixty feet high, is not the result of a variety of 

 soil, as would at first view seem, but is accounted for wholly, by the 

 lime that has elapsed since the ground on which they grew, was cut 

 or burnt over, (one or both,) the growth of pines now on the middle 

 region of the island, is of all ages, from one to fifty years old. This 

 will explain without any secret or diflficulty, the appearance that is 

 -everywhere presented to the stranger and traveller, as he passes on 

 the railroad through the island. A reference to a few facts on this 

 point, will help to understand this subject better: First, the very 

 large amount of charcoal that has been made and sent to New-York 

 and Brooklyn markets and from off this barren part of the Island, 

 shows that there must have been a large quantity of the woody pro- 

 duct to convert into that article; and next the amount of wood in 

 form of firewood, or cordwood carried from Suffolk county in times 

 past, is prodigious, and it has been constantly taken off from the 

 wild lands, and a great deal from this very land. 



Rev. Mr. Prime, in his recent history of Long Island, estimates 

 the wood carried to market from Suffolk county, at 60,000 cords an- 

 nually. I do not know from what data he makes the estimate. It 

 as thought by those who have had an opportunity to form an opinion, 

 that it is low, but even at this, and allowing for the quantity requi- 

 site to supply the inhabitants with fuel, (35,000 inhabitants in the 

 county) and what is cut and used for ship timber and building pur- 

 poses, that the county must long since have been deprived of its 

 wood and timber, as this is not a new state of things, a new process 

 having been going on for 100 years or more, had there not been a 

 very great power of reproduction in the land and its soil, on which 

 the wood and timber grows. From 18 to 20 and 25 , years form the 

 ordinary period for the reproduction of the woody crop, when it will 

 do to cut again. Now it is evident that land upon which trees will 

 thus grow, is not destitute of the principles, the materials, the sub- 



