92 NOETH AMERICA 



extends a belt of swamps and moorland, frequently 

 flooded, and covered with reeds and sedges. It is the 

 abode of the tall swamp- or bald-cypresses which lose 

 their needles in winter. The terraces and hummocks 

 between and beyond the marshes are clad with evergreen 

 temperate forests, in which the incense-tree or liquidam- 

 bar, the evergreen or Virginia oak, predominate, often 

 draped entirely with the lichen-like epiphyte tillandsia. 

 Evergreen magnolias, rhododendrons and other shrubs 

 of the same family are in evidence in the undergrowth, 

 where tall cane thickets give a touch of the Tropics. 

 Mixed forests of pines and oaks follow on the higher 

 and rolling slopes which lead up to the tableland of 

 limestone, which unfolds a park landscape of prairies, 

 scrub, and forests of a hard-leaf evergreen character 

 and where the 'cedar-glades' of Tennessee recur. 

 Further inland the plateau is interrupted by the great 

 pine-belt which extends over sands and sandy loams far 

 into Carolina. This vegetation is carried also into 

 Texas, while the belt of coast-swamps nearly reaches 

 the delta of the Rio Grande. Where the nature of the 

 ground allows it, the southern States have a prosperous 

 agriculture of a sub-tropical type, cotton, sugar-cane, 

 and tobacco being the staple crops, worked by means of 

 negro labour. 



Texas. Westward from the Gulf of Mexico, beyond 

 the dense cane- and cypress- swamps and damp coast- 

 meadows, there is a gradual ascent to a plateau rising 

 by successive broad terraces to a height of about 

 4,000 feet. The lower terraces are naturally much 

 eroded and form a belt of rolling land, which is mainly 

 composed of light, sandy loams and clays. This region 

 has a distinct season of heavy rains of about ten weeks' 

 duration, the rest of the year being nearly dry. 



