20 A NATURE WOOING. 



within. The railway fare upon all the roads in Flor- 

 ida is four cents per mile. 



The towns from Everett to Jacksonville are all 

 small, apparently pioneer affairs, started when the 

 railway was built, upon small clearings in a primeval 

 wilderness. For most of the way the soil of the up- 

 land appears to be a very thin coating of organic 

 matter resting on a bed of white sand. The long- 

 leaved pine, Pinus palustris Mill., and two or three 

 species of wire grass, Aristida, form ninety per cent, 

 or more of the vegetation of these so-called "pine- 

 barrens." The pines are almost all second growth, 

 and in many places are being used for turpentine pro- 

 duction. Occasionally one sees a giant, rising far 

 above its fellows, with long festoons of gray Spanish 

 moss, Tillandsia usneoides L., dangling from its out- 

 stretched limbs. These are the solitary sentinels of 

 the original pine forest, now standing guard, as it 

 were, over the younger generation. Their com- 

 panions have long since fallen before the axes of the 

 lumbermen, who invaded all this district adjacent to 

 the railway as soon as the latter was completed. 

 About the borders of the pine-barrens and in the 

 marshes the vegetation is much more dense and the 

 number of species of shrubs and trees very large. 



Crossing the St. Mary's River, a sluggish, lagoon- 

 like stream about one thousand feet in width, we en- 

 ter Florida land of our hopes and dreams and of 

 the hopes and dreams of thousands of other tourists 



