add a few taken from the older counties of this State: Coldspring, the Stepping-Stones, White Stone, Riverhead, West-Farms, Grassy Point, White Plains, Canoeplace, Oakhill, Wading River, Old Man's, Fireplace, Stony Brook, Fonda's Bush, Fish-house, &c.
Long Island shows an odd medley of names; it is in itself a sort of historical epitome of our career in this way; some Dutch names, some Indian, others English, others Yankee, with a sprinkling of Hebrew and Assyrian. Long Island was the common Dutch name. The counties of Kings, Queens, and Suffolk came, of course, from England, after the conquest of the colony under Charles II.; then we have Setauket, and Patchogue, Peconic, Montauk, and Ronkonkoma, which are Indian, with many more like them; Flushing, Flatbush, Gowanus, Breuckelen or Brooklyn, and Wallabout, are Dutch; Hempstead, Oyster Bay, Near Rockaway, Shelter Island, Far Rockaway, Gravesend, Bay Side, Middle Village, and Mount Misery, are colonial; Centreville, East New York, Mechanicsville, Hicksville, with others to match, are clearly Yankee; Jerusalem, we have always believed to be Jewish; Jericho, is Canaanitish, and Babylon, we understand to be Assyrian.
There is less excuse for the pompous folly committed by giving absurd names, when we remember that we are in fact no more wanting in good leading ideas for such purposes, than other people. After the first duty of preserving as many Indian words as possible, and after allowing a portion of the counties and towns for monuments to distinguished men, either as local benefactors or deserving well of the country generally, there would no doubt still remain a large number of sites to be named. But we need not set off on a wild goose chase in quest of these. Combina-
