OKEFINOKEE SWAMP 



607 



the rainfall that month having been only about half the normal for 

 August) was Bugaboo Island, one of the smallest. Its surface seems 

 to be elevated only a foot or two above the surrounding swamp, and its 

 edges slope off so gradually that one can not tell within several rods 

 just where swamp ends and island begins. Nine tenths or more of 

 the trees on this island are slash pine (Pinus EUiottii), a species com- 

 mon in low or flat pine-barrens all over southeastern Georgia. The 

 rest of the trees are mostly black pine (Pinus serotina), and the under- 



Sphagnum Bog with Pines and Ferns. 



growth consists of saw-palmettos (Serenoa) and several other low 

 evergreen bushes, much as on the neighboring mainland. There is al- 

 most no grass on the island, probably on account of the rarity of fires, 

 which outside of the swamp keep the bushes in some measure sup- 

 pressed. 



Bugaboo Island (and probably most of the others) is surrounded 

 by sphagnous bogs, which resemble the northern tamarack and cedar 

 swamps in many ways. The trees in the bogs are conifers, one ever- 

 green, the slash pine already mentioned, and one deciduous, the cypress 

 {Taxodium imhricarium.) ; analogous to the evergreen spruce and de- 

 ciduous tamarack of the northern bogs. (The white cedar or juniper, 

 Chamcecyparis, the only water-loving conifer common to the glaciated 

 region and coastal plain, is not certainly known to grow in Okefinokee, 

 but the chances are that it grows there just as it does in Dismal Swamp 

 and many of the swamps of Florida.) Beneath the trees, which grow 

 rather openly, tlie vegetation consists of heath-like shrubs, ferns 



