NATIVE BROOKS. 



BROOK that is purely natural, that shows no 

 trace of man's innovation throughout its course, 

 is a great rarity. A bit of newspaper or an old, 

 rusty tin can lodged somewhere mid the tangled tree- 

 roots, tells the age, if not the year, and in the more utili- 

 tarian communities there is that process of cleaning 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 stream 

 also, for a man cuts off his brook when he cuts down his 

 trees. 



However, on Staten Island there are some woodland 

 brooks still remaining, though not purely wild ones, and 

 others whose banks have been partly cleared, but which still 

 retain many pleasing features. They are naturally divided 

 into those of the eastern and western portions, for the Fresh 

 Kill, from the Sound, reaching inward, approaches quite 

 close to the Great Kill, 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 



