﻿94 FIELD AND FOREST. 



beautiful green savanna entirely surrounded by a dense forest of lofty 

 oaks and other trees, the entire area being overgrown with a great 

 variety. of sedges and grasses, with patches of Sagittarice, Pontederia, 

 Nuphar and other aquatics in the moister spots, while around the 

 pools Nymphce odorata, is abundant, mixed with the large circular 

 peltate leaves of Nelumbinm luteam, supported on their erect stems, 

 and tall blades of cat-tail (Typ/ia latifolid) and Scirpus vaiidus. 

 Around the margin of these ponds grow clumps of the tall Hibiscus 

 miliiaris, with its large pink and crimson flowers, and the Polygonum 

 Umphibium in such abundance that its pendant delicate carmine ra- 

 cemes almost give the prevailing color. The edges of the pond are 

 generally overhung by willows (chiefly Salix nigra and S. iucida,) 

 behind and above whose fronting screen of graceful, feathery foliage 

 rise the lofty trunks of the cypresses. 



The cypresses in this locality grow chiefly along the margin of 

 these ponds, where they are necessarily restricted to the immediate 

 shore on account of the high bank which rises behind them, and upon 

 which they immediately give way to the usual hard-woods. It 

 is only in the lower portions of the forest, between the ponds, and 

 through which run the connecting sloughs, that the cypress trees pre- 

 vail, or form groves by themselves; and even then there is an open, or 

 at most brushy, pond along one side. In one such grove the conical 

 bases of this tree were twenty-five to near fifty feet in circumference, 

 but the largest remaining tree was only twenty-two feet around at the 

 beginning of the cylindrical portion, some eight or ten feet from the 

 ground. The finer trees here, as indeed throughout these swamps, had 

 been cut and rafted off for shingles, so that the remnant was undoubtedly 

 a poor sample from which to judge the character of the original growth. 

 Certain it is, that several stumps where cut off, measured nine and 

 ten feet feet across, while one was thirteen feet in diameter ; and as 

 this tree is usually, if not always, cut at the beginning of the cylindri- 

 cal portion, we may judge that some of those felled far exceeded in 

 dimensions any now standing. The largest cypress tree observed in 

 this locality measured twenty-two feet around at about ten feet from 

 the ground, where its circumference was forty-five feet; its top spread 

 ninety-four feet, and was about a hundred and forty feet from the 

 ground ; but what was peculiarly striking in this example was the fact 

 that it consisted of two main trunks, growing vertically beside each 



