

oranges 



THE OTTAWA f(ATURALIST. 



Vol. XIV. OTTAWA, SEPTEMBER, 1900. No. 6. 



AN ORNITHOLOGICAL INCURSION INTO FLORIDA, 



FEBRUARY, 1900. 



To the casual nortnerner Florida is Tlorida, a land ot 

 and palms, but the tourist finds that his ticket, which is for Jack- 

 sonville, lands him at almost the northernmost and least interest- 

 ing part, and that to reach a truly tropical zone he must travel at 

 least 200, and better 300, miles further down the coast at a cost of 

 four cents a mile each way. When that is done, he finds the 

 Florida of the guide books, but for at least 175 miles south of 

 Jacksonville the orange industry has been killed by the annually 

 recurring frosts, and the vegetation of the tropics is absent. 



The extreme dampness of the atmosphere on the Atlantic 

 coast is best illustrated by the growth of the most interesting fern 

 of the country, the Hoary Polypody, Polypodium incaman. 

 Although the house-roofs have not a steep slope, and the sun must 

 be nearly vertical for part of the year, yet the northern half of the 

 roofs of most of the older houses in St. Augustine was covered 

 with this fern, growing in the moss which seemed to find an easy 

 lodgment there. Floridians call it the Resurrection Fern, from its 

 habit of curling up and exposing the hoary back of the frond in 

 dry weather, and reopening flat and green on the return of damp- 

 ness. In the woods of this moist climate the Live Oak, Quercus 

 virens, attains an enormous spread ot branches. I frequently 

 walked twenty paces from the trunk to the tip of a long branch 

 which would not rise more than twenty-five feet from the ground. 

 This would give a total diameter of 120 feet, about double the 

 height of the tree, and greater than that of most of the forest trees 



