78 ORNAMENTAL GARDENING 
In general they have been excavated down to the water level, 
or a little below it, and abandoned because of the difficulty of 
getting out material under water. Land on which these aban- 
doned pits are located is greatly depreciated in value as it is 
almost impossible to fill them. But how easily any one having 
such a pit on land at his home could make a thing of beauty of it! 
If its outline is not sufficiently broken and irregular he could 
easily make it so by blasting out here and there along the edge 
of it. Small bays and nooks could be worked out and the whole 
could soon be sheltered by planting rapid growing trees and 
shrubs, and along the walls in such spots an infinite variety of 
ferns and other plants requiring shade, shelter and moisture 
would flourish. Rich soil could be put into the water in places 
and aquatics planted. All the Thrinax palms will flourish in 
such places in the lower end of the state and Agaves, Aloes, 
Rhoeo and perhaps Saxifraga. Our native Ampelopsis or wood- 
bine and Ficus repens, also many other vines and creepers 
might be employed in screening, and they would soon turn 
an eyesore into a thing of beauty. 
Many of the places where phosphate has been mined might 
be skillfully treated in a somewhat similar way and the same 
remark applies to natural sinks or any excavation in the rock. 
Any one who loves his home and enters heartily into the spirit 
of cultivating plants and who has taste can devise almost in- 
numerable schemes for adding to the beauty of his place and 
doing away with what is unsightly in his surroundings. 
