218 
in the higher parts packs so that it supports the tires of a motor 
car, while that especially which is under water part of the year, 
Ther were in a vast dead and dying garden—the Lake 
een basin in the immediate vicinity of the lake. The 
wreckage was overwhelmingly evident everywhere e 
prairie was still a green desert truly, but the peat vegetation 
—shrinking in size and area year by year as a result of fire and 
drainage—was unrelieved by flowers of an ae and ee 
primeval lake hammock with its humus foundation still sent up 
louds of smoke from the areas that had not been destroyed in 
preceding years. 
After spending the night at Okeechobee City we set out for 
the upper waters of the Caloosahatchee and for Fort Myers at 
its mouth 
The prairies east of the Kissimmee River were dry, even the 
peculiar pop-ash hammock described in a former paper! was 
perfectly drained, whereas the last time we crossed it there was 
over a foot of water standing there. The floor of the hammock 
was a das ciate Ground-covers were plentiful and exten- 
a, 
av 
(Hemianthus), false- anal (Ilysanthes anete a), with 
white and lavender flow aan (Lob elia Feayt), with 
bright-blue es hid ae and from view. The most 
showy shrub was a mallow ibe grandifiorus) which bears 
great white or pink flowers six to eight inches wide. Large 
beds of fe; erns, sae of three cieer kinds—royal-fern (s- 
for an exceptional uxur! Ww" 
(Pontederia cordata), lizard’s-tail Srila asaglls _ 
leather-fern, for the two former we s high a ea 
while the fern was thrice as tall. The pens were Seen 
1Journal of The New York Botanical Garden 22: 61, 62. 
