MYSTERIES PROFOUJs'D iy[ THE XATURAL. 97 



islands constituting the Bahama group should produce forms of 

 vegetable life so widely dissimilar and infinitely varied. Nature 

 has provided but one table, with a bill of fare exceedingly short 

 and simple, for all the wondrous display of fruits and flowers and 

 forests which these islands exhibit — a table which must, to the 

 rampant growers, look very discouraging. In the valleys and deep 

 rich soils of the river bottoms in the United States, the observer 

 naturally concludes that the vegetable commissary department 

 is in quantity, quality and variety, on a scale corresponding with 

 the magnificent floral world which it supports. But with a soil 

 nearly as scant as that which is found upon the Belgian pave- 

 ments of northern city streets, the miracle of producing much 

 out of nothing is performed under our eyes. 



Roots creep over the rocks and penetrate their crevices and 

 crannies, searching and collecting materials for the green, pol- 

 ished, waxen leaves — the pure, white, and exquisitely perfumed 

 flowers — the golden balls and delicious pulp of the orange. 

 Near them are other roots entwined among and persistently 

 pushing into the little pockets of the same and similar rocks, 

 and, by an inexplicable alchemy, obtaining from them nutriment 

 for the growth of the tall stately stem, the large and graceful 

 plume, the dry husks, the hard shells, the soft and palatable 

 pulp, and the cool, sweet milk of the cocoanut palm. In like 

 manner the sapodilla, with its russet apples of " sugared honey " 

 — the long, large leaved, branchless banana, feather-crested like 

 the palm, with its large, pendent, purple fruit bud at the end 

 of a long drooping stem, around which its gloved ambrosial 

 fruit is thickly clustered — the lime, the lemon, the pawpaw 

 the pine apple, the guava, the star apple, the bread fruit, the 

 shaddock, the mango, the date, tlie almond, the sweet sup, the 

 sour sap, the fig, plums of different kinds, and many other 

 fruit-bearing and other trees, each, from lowest root to topmost 



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