26 IN THE FLAT-WOODS. 



a tall pine, the tallest in the wood, where 

 he pranced about for a while, striking sundry 

 picturesque but seemingly aimless attitudes, 

 and then made off for good. All in all, he 

 was a wild-looking bird, if ever I saw one. 



I was no sooner in St. Augustine, of course, 

 than my eyes were open for wild flowers. 

 Perhaps I felt a little disappointed. Cer- 

 tainly the land was not ablaze with color. 

 In the grass about the old fort there was 

 plenty of the yellow oxalis and the creeping 

 white houstonia ; and from a crevice in the 

 wall, out of reach, leaned a stalk of golden- 

 rod in full bloom. The reader may smile, 

 if he will, but this last flower was a surprise 

 and a stumbling-block. A vernal goldenrod ! 

 Dr. Chapman's Flora made no mention of 

 such an anomaly. Sow thistles, too, looked 

 strangely anachronistic. I had never thought 

 of them as harbingers of springtime. The 

 truth did not break upon me till a week 

 or so afterward. Then, on the way to the 

 beach at Daytona, where the pleasant penin- 

 sula road traverses a thick forest of short- 

 leaved pines, every tree of which leans heav- 

 ily inland at the same angle ("the leaning 

 pines of Daytona," I always said to myself, 



