THE PLANT WORLD 5 



the region, my friend Mr. Eeasoner making a collection of plants for his 

 nursery at Oneco, Florida. 



On our way down we ran up Roger's River, just north of Cape 

 Sable, as far as Evans' Plantation, Avhere there were quite a number of 

 royal palms {Oreodoxa regia), growing along the banks of the stream 

 A good many specimens of Auricula pellucens, an air-breathing mollusk 

 living in brackish swamps, were picked up about the roots of these trees, 

 and it is quite probable that the low ground on which they stood is oc- 

 casionally submerged with brackish water in the time of unusually high 

 tides. These palms, though healthy and vigorous, were not numerous, 

 and were generally of small size, none exceeding, I should think, 50 feet 

 in height. 



On our return trip we stopped in at Goodland Point, back of Cape 

 Eomain, where we secured the services of a Mr. Johnson, a fine, intelli- 

 gent, magnificently developed man, to act as guide and boatman for a 

 trip to the royal palm hammock, some six or seven miles back from 

 the coast. Mr. Reasoner, Mr. Johnson and I started early the next 

 morning in a row boat, passing for tlie first few miles through a laby- 

 rinth of narrow and wide, crooked channels, among which the tide ran 

 sometimes with us and as often against us. These passages ran be- 

 tween low, mangrove-covered islets, for this was the Ten Thousand Is- 

 lands, and the name is most appropriately^ bestowed. These low islets 

 were everywhere clothed with a dense growth of mangroves standing 

 high out of the mud on their long, stilted, curved roots, reminding one of 

 some strange kind of spider. The channels were filled with coon oys- 

 ters, often to such an extent that we could only get the boat through 

 them with the greatest difficult}^ and in many places they covered the loose 

 air roots of the mangroves, forming bunches of a bushel or more, arrest- 

 ing the growth of the roots and swinging free in the tide. The water 

 was of a dirty beer color, and everywhere there was that foul, sicken- 

 ing odor found only in a mangrove swamp. Mosquitoes swarmed, even 

 in the middle of the day, in every spot except the open sunlight, so that 

 the region was one of the most gruesome and dreary I had ever been in. 

 Here and there w^e saw an island a little more elevated than the rest, 

 sometimes having on it a great shell heap. On these there were Mastic 

 {Sideroxylon pallidum), Jamaica Dogwood {Piscidia erytlwina), Gumbo 

 Limbo {Bursera gummifera) , the Star Apple {Chrysopliyllum olivaeforme). 

 Cabbage Palmetto {Sabal palmetto), with a variety of shrubs and creep- 

 ers, and on one or two of these were signs of clearing and cultivation. 

 Some of them were more or less overrun in places with a Cereus {C. 

 pitajaya ?) three, four, or five angled, which sometimes stood erect, but 

 oftener scrambled over the low trees and undergrowth, now half climb- 

 ing and again falling to the ground and taking root onl}^ to rise again. 



