170 MEMOIR OF DR. HARVEY. 



plants. Several of the oaks are very beautiful trees, with glossy 

 broad leaves, much larger than we see on oaks ; others have 

 leaves so like chestnut, that, till you look very close, they seem 

 like chestnut-trees. The hickory is like a walnut, with very large, 

 dark-green leaves ; and the black walnut has a mixed character, 

 between walnut and ash. The underwood is sumach, already 

 beginning to redden, Clethra very abundant and very sweet, 

 wax-berry, bog-myrtle, Comptonia, and whortleberries without 

 end ; a few small flowers between — scarlet lobelia not the least 

 handsome ; fungi that make me regret the trouble of keeping 

 them, &e. I have picked up one seaweed ; nothing comes in 

 except after easterly gales. 



New York, August 2,8th. I arrived here to tea, and next 

 morning set out with my friend Professor Bailey on an excursion 

 to the eastern end of Long Island. We crossed the ferry at 

 Brooklyn, entered the railway cars at half-past nine, and set 

 out on a trip of ninety-four miles to G-reenport, a distance 

 accomplished in five hours. The road lies through a very level 

 uninteresting country, the whole of Long Island being merely 

 a high gravel bank covered with a thin soil ; the grass at this 

 season, after a long drought, too brown for beauty, and the trees 

 of small size. Many cultivated spots near the New York end ; 

 then a long belt of low forest land, covered with varieties of 

 oak and some pine. Then a space covered with a dwarf species 

 of oak, which, even when fully grown, and loaded with acorns, is 

 no bigger than a gooseberry-bush. Then there were extensive 

 plains covered with grass, and patches of a small shrub (Iva 

 fruticans), which indicate a saltness in the soil. The plains 

 appeared to be several miles across, and must have a prairie 

 aspect. Then we had more scrubby forests, and then a succes- 

 sion of ponds, covered with water-lilies, and a variety of pretty 

 flowers, only seen from the railway car. Then swamps and salt- 

 marshes ; then arms of the sea running in, and finally Green- 

 port itself. We passed through many "cities" and towns on 

 the way, with fine names, some with large public buildings, and 

 very long, very wide, and very straight streets, and even squares 

 and places ; but very few with many houses. One street, called 

 East New York, is laid out on a great scale ; but there is only a 

 house here and there, at the distance of several hundred yards. 

 Greenport is thinly built in the same fashion, covering a large 



