Penoscot Bay, Maine.
1896 
July 3 
No 2
  Spoon Island. About 40 acres with two ridges rising 50 to 150 feet above
the sea, converging at the Southern end of the island, diverging widely 
at the N. end, with a deep V - shaped valley between. This valley is 
cornered with a luxuriant growth of English grass. The ridges are 
also grassy in many places but of bare rock or soil in others. 
There are fewer ledges than on most of the islands but the ridges 
are between with boulders & flat, angular rocks of various sizes. There 
are also many stumps & prostrate trunks of large trees which were 
evidently cut very many years ago & which are in various stages of 
disintegration. In a sheltered niche on the western shore grow three 
or four small but green & fairly vigorous balsams and the extreme 
south western point bristles with a grove of [delete]bleached[/margin] dead balsams
bleached and barkless but still retaining many of their lateral branches. 
Over the great part of the western ridge the ground is covered 
with a reddish brown vegetable humus from 6 to 12 inches in 
depth and mainly composed of rotten & as yet not wholly 
disintegrated wood. This soil is exceedingly light & porous. In 
places it supports a rich growth of grass & various kinds of wild, 
flowering plants, in others it is almost or quite bare. It 
covers many of the large flat rocks. In it the Petrels make 
their burrows. We found them everywhere when it occurs except 
along the eastern ridge when it is not as widely disturbed 
as on the western side of the island & where there appeared 
to be no Petrels nesting. Nor were there any in the valley where 
the soil is doubtless too [delete]tog[/delete] tough for their tender feet.