BEWILDERMENT 97 



squared, three or four feet high, and as many 

 feet thick. Yonder euphorbia bush, too (Pom- 

 settia), with its flaring, flaming rosettes of scar- 

 let floral leaves at the tips of the stems this, 

 like the crotons, he is more or less familiar with 

 under glass. All these are cultivated plants, 

 pleasant to look upon out of doors in midwinter, 

 but of themselves not especially interesting, per- 

 haps, to a botanist. 



But now, at the foot of Thirteenth or Four- 

 teenth Street, less than a quarter of a mile from 

 the hotel, we come to some vacant lots. Here 

 are a few dingy live-oaks (still with last year's 

 leaves on), and in their shadow, sprawling over 

 the tangled undergrowth, a wilderness of gadding 

 morning-glory vines. How lovely the flowers are 

 pink and blue ! Unless it be the ubiquitous 

 fish crow, there is nothing else so common in this 

 Miami country as the morning-glory ; and the 

 vines, acres on acres, hold in bloom, one kind 

 and another, so I am given to understand, almost 

 or quite the whole year round. 



Now we leave the sidewalk and are in the pine 

 woods. The trees long-leaved pines our 

 botanist knows well enough, the train having 

 brought him past a thousand miles of such, on 

 his way hither; though, even so, he might be 

 puzzled to tell to which of two related species 



