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 
