CHAPTER X 
LIVE OAKS 
A® there are agreeable distinctions that 
are New England or Southern or West- 
ern, so there is a charm local, and almost 
personal, in the topography, the geology, and 
the flora of these sections. Especially is this 
true of trees, which so materially lend in- 
dividuality to the landscape and are so in- 
timately identified with it. The cypress of 
Southern swamps, the spruce of the North 
Woods, the ahuehuetls of Mexico, and the cot- 
tonwoods of the Plains are as fundamental to 
Nature as are any peculiarities of idiom or of 
custom to the people. It may please the 
fancy of the naturalist, if he have no better 
ground for the assumption, to detect at least 
a superficial relation between these natural 
characteristics and the peculiarities of the 
inhabitants. Such an assumption is, it must 
be admitted, more consonant with an earlier 
and mythologic period, when man’s relation 
133 
