TORREYA 
December, 1912. 
Vol. 12 No. 12 
THE HEMPSTEAD PLAINS OF LONG ISLAND* 
Bv RoLAND M. HARPER 
There is in the western third of Long Island, within an hour's 
journey by rail from New York, about fifty square miles of dry 
land which was treeless when the country was first settled, and a 
considerable part of this can still be seen in its natural condition. 
his prairie, known locally as the “Hempstead Plains," is 
mentioned in a few historical and descriptive works, but long 
before 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. 
My attention was first called to it by the following statement 
in the U. S. Department of Agriculture's Soil Survey of the 
* Long Island area," by J. A. Bonsteel and others:]Ó— "The . . . 
Hempstead plain is notable in being a natural prairie east of the 
Allegheny Mountains. In its natural state it bears a rank 
growth of sedge grass. It was treeless when first discovered 
and was originally used as commons for the pasturage of cattle 
and horses belonging to individuals and to communities." The 
* This paper was originally read before the Association of American Geographers, 
December 31, 1909, and published in abridged form in the Brooklyn Standard- 
Union for January 16, тото, and in full, with five illustrations, in the Bulletin of 
the American Geographical Society (43: 351-360) for May, 19rr. On account of 
its local botanical interest, and in view of the fact that the periodicals named г 
very few of the readers of TORREYA, and that the area is rapidly being developed 
by real estate companies, we have obtained permission from the American Geo- 
graphical Society to use it in ToRREYA. The au or has here eliminated some 
passages which do not immediately concern botanists, and supplied an entirely new 
set of illustrations, none of which have ever been published before.—Eb. 
T Field Operations of the Bureau of Soils for 1903, p. 99; or p. 13 of the “advance 
sheets” for this particular area, published in January, 1905. А somewhat similar 
statement occurs 27 pages farther on. 
[No. тт, Vol. r2, of TORREYA, comprising pp. 257-276, was issued ro Nov. 1912. ] 
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