Florida Swamps and Forests 



of tenderness and love as is bestowed on angels 

 in heaven or saints on earth. 



I think that most of the antipathies which 

 haunt and terrify us are morbid productions of 

 ignorance and weakness. I have better thoughts 

 of those alligators now that I have seen them 

 at home. Honorable representatives of the 

 great saurians of an older creation, may you 

 long enjoy your lilies and rushes, and be 

 blessed now and then with a mouthful of ter- 

 ror-stricken man by way of dainty ! 



Found a beautiful lycopodium to-day, and 

 many grasses in the dry sunlit places called 

 "barrens," "hummocks,'* "savannas," etc. 

 Ferns also are abundant. What a flood of heat 

 and light is daily poured out on these beauti- 

 ful openings and intertangled woods! "The 

 land of the sunny South," we say, but no 

 part of our diversified country is more shaded 

 and covered from sunshine. Many a sunny 

 sheet of plain and prairie break the continuity 

 of the forests of the North and West, and the 

 forests themselves are mostly lighted also, 

 [99 I 



