MISCELLANEOUS ORNAMENTS. 



Elsewhere I have devoted an entire chapter to the subject 

 of fern pools and similar adornments. In this I shall treat of a 

 variety of artificial constructions intended to be ornamental 

 but often quite otherwise. 



The average person who locates in Florida, either for the 

 winter or permanently, in a region where there is open water, 

 is desirous of having a water front. A view over the water is 

 always delightful; it appeals even to those who are absolutely 

 destitute of taste. Many wish to own a boat, to fish or have 

 a wharf; hence a water front is always a desideratum. 



No sooner does the average man possess a water front than he 

 considers it necessary to build a sea wall along it. In nine 

 cases out of ten there isn't the slightest need for it: he simply 

 builds it because it is supposed to be the correct thing, because 

 it is the fashion to do so, just as he would wear a collar around 

 his neck a foot high if the other fellows did. There are cases 

 where the sea or a stream is encroaching on the land and a wall 

 is needed, but it is safe to say that as a general thing it is not, 

 and that it is only a blot on the landscape. Each owner usually 

 makes a straight wall a little different from that of his neighbor; 

 each conforming with the line of his front, and when all is done 

 it gives one the impression that the country is involved in war 

 and that the whole construction is a line of fortifications, that 

 only a few guns mounted at proper intervals are needed to put 

 the place in a state of defence. 



Most of the shores of all bodies of brackish water in the lower 

 part of the state are heavily fringed with a growth of mangroves 

 and other trees that love the salt of the sea. No device that was 

 ever constructed could equal this growth as a protection against 

 the encroachment of the ocean. It is a very rare thing that 

 even the hardest hurricane that visits this region does any serious 

 injury to this nature-planted sea wall. The mangroves with 

 their wonderfully arched, stilted roots and their strange manner 

 of propagation are among the greatest objects of wonder that 



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