NATIVE BKOOKS. 



BY WM. T. DAVIS. 



A BROOK that is purely natural, that shows no trace of man's in- 

 novation throughout its course is a great rarity. A bit of news- 

 paper or an old rusty tin can lodged somewhere mid the tangled 

 tree roots, tells the age if not the year, and in the more utilitarian 

 communities there is that process of clearing up before which the 

 trees and ferns are swept away. A brook without ferns, without 

 shade, with old tin cans and bits of newspaper, is no longer under 

 the rule of Sylvanus, and every additional stroke of the axe is 

 one for the brook also, for a man cuts off his brook when he cuts 

 down his trees. 



However, on Staten Island there are some wood-land brooks still 

 remaining, though not purely wild ones, and others whose banks 

 have been partly cleared but which still retain many pleasing feat- 

 ures. They are naturally divided into those of the eastern and 

 western portions for the Fresh Kills from the Sound reaching in- 

 ward approaches quite close to the Great Kills, and these arms of 

 the sea leave only a neck of land a mile and three-quarters wide. 

 On the eastern portion about a dozen streams have found their way 

 on the map. But a map gives a poor history and though it may 

 exhibit with great exactness all the windings and fantastic curves 

 that a little brook may take, it cannot say whether its course is over 

 sand or rocks, nor anything of the trees that grow aloug its banks. 

 The map tells just as much to-day of the little brook that runs 

 down to the shore nearly parallel to the Turnpike road, by Brook 

 street as it did a hundred years ago, when it emptied as a pure little 

 stream near the " Watering Place,"where the ships stopped to fill 

 their casks before going to sea. No one will say of it now " how 

 beautiful," nor quote a line from Bryant's "Wind and Stream," and 

 of all the wild creatures that once wandered along its banks only a 

 few musk rats that occasionly appear on sidewalks and in cellars, 

 now remain. 



