MISCELLANEOUS ORNAMENTS. 
Elsewhere I have devoted an entire chapter to the subject 
of fern pools and similar adornments. In this I shall treat of a 
variety of artificial constructions intended to be ornamental 
but often quite otherwise. 
The average person who locates in Florida, either for the 
winter or permanently, in a region where there is open water, 
is desirous of having a water front. A view over the water is 
always delightful; it appeals even to those who are absolutely 
destitute of taste. Many wish to own a boat, to fish or have 
a wharf; hence a water front is always a desideratum. 
No sooner does the average man possess a water front than he 
considers it necessary to build a sea wall along it. In nine 
cases out of ten there isn’t the slightest need for it: he simply 
builds it because it is supposed to be the correct thing, because 
it is the fashion to do so, just as he would wear a collar around 
his neck a foot high if the other fellows did. There are cases 
where the sea or a stream is encroaching on-the land and a wall 
is needed, but it is safe to say that as a general thing it is not, 
and that it is only a blot on the landscape. Each owner usually 
makes a straight wall a little different from that of his neighbor; 
each conforming with the line of his front, and when all is done 
it gives one the impression that the country is involved in war 
and that the whole construction is a line of fortifications, that 
only a few guns mounted at proper intervals are needed to put 
the place in a state of defence. 
Most of the shores of all bodies of brackish water in the lower 
part of the state are heavily fringed with a growth of mangroves 
and other trees that love the salt of the sea. No device that was 
ever constructed could equal this growth as a protection against 
the encroachment of the ocean. It is a very rare thing that 
even the hardest hurricane that visits this region does any serious 
injury to this nature-planted sea wall. The mangroves with 
their wonderfully arched, stilted roots and their strange manner 
of propagation are among the greatest objects of wonder that 
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