AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 41 



Long Island for two centiu-ies. I found liim despairing often of 

 his life. I did all I could to encourage liim. I rejoice now in 

 seeing him here in health and happiness, while the monster pre- 

 judice is rapidly decaying before his eyes. 



Dr. Edgar F. Peck rose and said, that if the committee would 

 please to hear him, he would speak of his connexion with the 

 new era lately begun for the prosperity of this beautiful island, 

 where there are more than one hundred and fifty thousand acres 

 of land, which only require the spade and the plow to bring it 

 all into such fields as we here have before us, rich and beautiful 

 as a garden. But in spite of that, thousands of men have here- 

 tofore believed it to be barren. If it was bare of vegetation, one 

 might believe it cursed with sterility; but what is the fact? the 

 whole ground is covered with vegetation all the year round, and 

 for two hundred yeai'S has regularly been covered with growth, 

 especially oaks and pines, alternately, every twenty years. The 

 oak is not a stinted growth, it is new growth of a few years, 

 which has been constantly .cut down, as soon as it is large 

 enough, and carried off to the city of New-York and elsewhere 

 for firewood, from the first settlement of the country. In 1849, 

 a friend of mine paid two dollars an acre for some of this land, 

 which yielded him three hundred and fifty bushels of turnips 

 and a large quantity of pumpkins and squashes. 

 , Solon Eobinson — Sir, it is one of the greatest misfortunes that 

 wood will grow here; it is very hard work to clear it away in 

 the style in which you behold this fair farm has been delivered 

 from that horrid forest there ! 



Dr. Peck — What has been said by our chairman as to Dr. 

 Mitchell's opinion of the fitness of this island to grow locust 

 trees, is true. The locust was first introduced at Sands' Point, 

 by Captain Sands, and it grows no where more successfully than 

 it does here. 



Solon Eobinson — And has so flourished that it has been ex- 

 ported to France. 



Rev. Evan M. Johnson, D.D. — Captain Sands used the timber 

 for posts on his place. 



Dr. Peck referred to Hon. Silas Wood's Plistory of Long 

 Island, which contains the records of the town of Jamaica; in 

 which there is a decree requiring every male inhabitant to cut 

 down hushes every two years, and a penalty of two shillings and 

 six pence for cutting down an oak tree. During the revolution 



