132 MICROSCOPICAL COLLECTIONS IN FLORIDA. 



for these regions, as for the Northern States, a rich and abundant 

 alluvium, sufficient in itself for the production of a rapid and 

 vigorous vegetation. The South has apparently only the siftings 

 of our northern soil, carried down to the ocean by rivers, and 

 then washed up by the sea-waves to form its interminable 

 sandy plains. But to compensate for this natural infertility of 

 soil, the atmosphere, especially of southern Florida, abounds in 

 all the elements of plant growth. The winds which come up 

 from the Gulf on one side, or the Atlantic on the other, are 

 charged with moisture, and bear also minute quantities of nitric 

 acid and saline compounds ; while the exhalations from the 

 swamps and marshes furnish in abundance the salts of ammonia 

 and carbonic oxide. 



Now to utilize these precious products from the air, it is nec- 

 essary for plants to have peculiar organs, such as absorbing 

 glands, glandular hairs, stellate hairs, protecting scales, and a 

 variety of other special appendages. All these have been devel- 

 oped by time and necessity in remarkable profusion and perfec- 

 tion in the vegetation of southern Florida. Although the 

 meagre soil produces no nutritious grasses and scarcely enough 

 of an honest vegetation to keep an herbivorous animal from 

 starving, yet there is an abundant flora such as it is air plants, 

 parasitic growths, insectivorous plants, and strange herbs, all 

 seeking a livelihood in some other way than the good old honest 

 one of growing from their roots. It is this fact which makes the 

 microscopical interest of botanical researches in central Florida. 

 One can scarcely examine with a two-thirds objective the flowers, 

 leaves, or stems of any plant growing there, without discovering 

 some beautiful or striking modification of plant hairs, or scales, 

 or glands, or other absorbing or secreting organs. 



We will notice first the Onosmodium as found in Florida O. 

 mrginianum. It grows from Virginia south, but is more gland- 

 ular I think in Florida than anywhere else. It will be almost 

 the first plant one would stop to observe on entering the pine 

 woods a dark green, narrow-leaved, biennial herb; its straight 

 stem of the second year's growth, about a foot high, bearing a 

 raceme-like cluster of flowers, coiled at the end, and straighten- 



