84 BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN MEMOIRS 



While there is not much question that there have always been Downs 

 and wooded kettleholes, and that the Hither Woods have always been 

 about as they now are, there is at least some evidence that Montauk was 

 once more thoroughly timbered than it has been since the first whites came 

 there in 1640. 



In 1849, J. A. Ayres wrote a book called "The Legends of Montauk," 

 in which he says: "The limits of Montauk were once, perhaps, somewhat 

 greater than they are at present. On the north side near the Great Pond 

 are the remains of a pine forest which stood on ground now covered by the 

 sea. The roots remain buried in the sand and are visible only on the 

 receding of the tide." The writer has never seen these during the last 

 ten years, and such evidence taken by itself would not be conclusive. But 

 Elias Lewis, in his "Ups and Downs of the Long Island Coast"* says: 

 "At Montauk Point, north of the lighthouse, is a low swampy place over 

 which the tides sometimes rise. We are informed by Mr. J. F. Gould, 

 who was for many years keeper of the lighthouse, that stumps are laid bare 

 in front of this swamp, at the sea-margin, when the tide is extremely low." 

 As hundreds of similar cases are known on Long Island, where what is now 

 water or salt meadow was once forest, the Montauk records are, no doubt, 

 simply local corroboration of a pretty common phenomenon. They all im- 

 ply that the forest, and of course the island itself, was once more extensive 

 than it now is. 



That conception involves the proposition that the old coastal plain, 

 marked roughly by the present 100 fathom contour, which is now far out to 

 sea, supported a forest growth, which, through the submergence of this 

 plain, was destroyed. The unquestioned occurrence of stumps of this now 

 buried forest certainly supports this view.f At Block Island, Dr. Hollick 

 postulates the destruction of the forest that remained after the submergence 

 of this old coastal plain as due to man, but that, as the historical record 

 indicates, could scarcely have happened at Montauk. But whether re- 

 moved by the agency of man or the elements, the re-establishment of forest 

 over Montauk or Block Island, without the protection, which the old 

 coastal plain must have afforded, is practically impossible, except in locally 

 protected places. Nor does it need much protection from these severe 

 conditions to produce a forest, for at Gardiner's Island, only ten miles away, 

 there is the finest deciduous forest growth on Long Island, if not in the whole 

 of New York State. 



* Pop Sci. Mo. 10: 434-446. February 1877. 



tSee Hollick, A. Trans. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 16: 9-18. 1898; Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 

 11: 55-72. 1898; Trans. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 12: 189-202. 1893; Bull. N. Y. Bot. Card. 2: 

 392. 1902; and numerous papers by M. L. Fernald, who has adopted and greatly amplified 

 the view of the effect of this old coastal plain on the distribution of species along the 

 Atlantic coast. 



