262 REMARKABLE SARRACENIAS. 



dark-blue fruit. It is found from Canada to Florida ; a mere bush in 

 the north, but a tree fifty feet high in the south. The wood is soft, 

 light, of a coarse fibre, with a pungent aromatic taste, and a strong 

 agreeable odour. The wood is brought to market in the shape of 

 chips, but for medicinal purposes the thick spongy bark of the root is 

 prepared, and it is found extremely valuable as a powerful stimulant, 

 sodorific, and diuretic. The mucilaginous leaves are employed in 

 thickening soup. An infusion of the bark or wood makes a pleasant 

 beverage, formerly known as Saloop ; and the wood also yields an oil 

 which is used medicinally. 



But it is in the state of Texas, and especially near San Antonio 

 de Bejar, that those immense desert spaces commence which occupy all 

 the northern region of Mexico. The southern districts of Texas offer 

 in their prevailing landscapes a mixture of beautiful prairies and 

 shady woods. Among the plants peculiar to humid and turfy 

 localities, I may particularize the Sarracenias, a group of remark- 

 able exogens, whose leaves are hollowed out into tubes or pitchers, 

 open at the upper end, and streaked with bands of different colours ; 

 the Eriocaulons, a kind of rush, carrying their small flowers in 

 spherical capitals on the summits of their tall branching stems ; and 

 the Nelumbios (Nelumbium calopliylluwi), aquatic plants of unusual 

 beauty, American congeners of the celebrated Lotus, the " insane 

 root which takes the reason prisoner." The nuts are wholesome and 

 edible, and the root-stocks are also occasionally eaten. These plants 

 are likewise found, in analogous habitats, in Mississippi and Louisi- 

 ana, accompanied by the light-green Magnolia, the Dog-berry tree of 

 Florida, several Wax-berries, and the Sassafras laurel, now acclima- 

 tized in Europe, and whose bark is employed as I have said, medicin- 

 ally, while its wood and roots are made use of by turners and toy- 

 manufacturers. 



Prairies abound in Texas, wide rolling sweeps of grassy sward, 

 with an apparently interminable horizon, unbroken by rock, or wood, 

 or river leagues upon leagues of rank thick grass where countless 

 herds are depastured, and where the hunter still finds game worthy 



