A MEADOW MUD-HOLE. 



153 



cate fruit, and hang almost like our onions that 

 are tied on ropes." The peach was probably in- 

 troduced into Florida by the Spaniards, and in 

 about a century or less its cultivation by the 

 Indians had reached northward as far as New 

 Jersey. The nuts and roots of the lotus could 

 as readily be transported as the pits of the peach, 

 so no obstacle was in the way. Intertribal inter- 

 course was very far-reaching, as shown by the 

 occurrence of peculiar forms of stone implements 

 common in distant localities, and Mexican ob- 

 sidian and Minnesota red pipe-clay along our 

 eastern Atlantic seaboard. 



While yet we have the Indian in mind it is 

 well to refer also to the very significant fact that 

 these people took the golden-club (Orontmm 

 aquaticum} from the tide-waters and planted it 

 in upland sink-holes, miles from the nearest spot 

 where it grew naturally. 



Perhaps we can never be positive about the 

 matter. If a fiction, it is so pleasing a one I 

 trust it will never be overthrown. To stand 

 upon the bank of a pond and see in it traces of 

 both an aboriginal flower-garden and a farm 

 certainly adds to the interest that surrounds the 

 plant. 



We have it on the authority of Emerson that 

 Thoreau expected to find the Victoria regia 

 about Concord. It was but an extravagant 



