122 FLORIDA 



roots " of its own, till landing among them is an 

 adventure hardly to be thought of. After the 

 mangroves come taller hedges of the cocoa plum, 

 leafier still, and equally shining. 



" Are n't you glad you know what this bush 

 is ? " I shouted downstream to the professor. 



" Indeed I am," he shouted back. 



Without this knowledge, which we had ac- 

 quired within a few days, by a kind of accident, 

 as before related, our present state of mind 

 would have been pitiable. We were surprised 

 to find the plant so fond of water, having noticed 

 it heretofore in comparatively dry situations. 

 Another example of the extreme adaptability of 

 tropical plants, the professor remarked. 



By and by we came to the first cypress trees, 

 the only ones I have seen in this all but swamp- 

 less Miami neighborhood ; beautiful in their new 

 dress of living green. I rejoiced at the sight. 

 Under one of them we landed, admiring the 

 "knees" that its roots had sent up till the 

 ground was studded with them. These, the pro- 

 fessor tells me (it is nothing new, by his account 

 of the matter, but it is new to me), are believed 

 to serve as breathing or aerating organs, supply- 

 ing to the tree the oxygen for lack of which, 

 standing in water, as it mostly does, it would 

 otherwise drown. All visitors to Florida are 



