82 ALONG THE HILLSBOROUGH. 



It dotted the grass in Florida very much as 

 five-fingers do in Massachusetts, I sometimes 

 thought. And the creeping, round-leaved 

 houstonia was here, with a superfluity of a 

 weedy blue sage (Salvia lyrata). Here, 

 also, as in Daytona, I found a strikingly 

 handsome tufted plant, a highly varnished 

 evergreen, which I persisted in taking for 

 a fern the sterile fronds in spite of 

 repeated failures to find it described by 

 Dr. Chapman under that head, until at last 

 an excellent woman came to my help with 

 the information that it was " coontie " (Za- 

 mia integrifolia), famous as a plant out 

 of which the Southern people made bread 

 in war time. This confession of botanical 

 amateurishness and incompetency will be 

 taken, I hope, as rather to my credit than 

 otherwise ; but it would be morally worth- 

 less if I did not add the story of another 

 plant, which, in this same New Smyrna 

 hammock, I frequently noticed hanging in 

 loose bunches, like blades of flaccid deep 

 green grass, from the trunks of cabbage 

 palmettos. The tufts were always out of 

 reach, and I gave them no particular 

 thought ; and it was not until I got home 



