MYSTERIES PROFOUND IN THE NATURAL 97 
islands constituting the Bahama group should produce forms of — 
vegetable life so widely dissimilar and infinitely varied. Nature 
has provided but one table, with a bill of fare exceedingly short 
and simple, for all the wondrous display of fruits and flowers and 
forests which these islands exhibit—a table which must, to the 
rampant growers, look very discouraging. Inthe valleysand deep 
rich soils of the river bottoms in the United States, the observer 
naturally concludes that the vegetable commissary department 
is in quantity, quality and variety, on ascale corresponding with | 
the magnificent floral world which it supports. But with a soil — 
nearly as scant as that which is found upon the Belgian pave- 
ments of northern city streets, the miracle of producing much. 
out of nothing is performed under our eyes. 
Roots creep over the rocks and penetrate their crevices and. 
crannies, searching and collecting materials for the green, pol- 
ished, waxen leaves—the pure, white, and exquisitely perfumed 
flowers—the golden balls and delicious pulp of the orange. 
Near them are other roots entwined among and persistently 
pushing into the little pockets of the same and similar rocks, 
and, by an inexplicable alchemy, obtaining from them nutriment 
for the growth of the tall stately stem, the large and graceful 
plume, the dry husks, the hard shells, the soft and palatable _ 
pulp, and the cool, sweet milk of the cocoanut palm. In like 
manner the sapodilla, with its russet apples of ‘‘sugared honey ” 
—the long, large leaved, branchless banana, feather-crested like 
the palm, with its large, pendent, purple fruit bud at the end 
of a long drooping stem, around which its gloved ambrosial 
fruit is thickly clustered—the lime, the lemon, the pawpaw 
the pine apple, the guava, the star apple, the bread fruit, the 
shaddock, the mango, the date, the almond, the sweet sap, the 
sour sap, the fig, plums of different kinds, and many other 
fruit-bearing and other trees, each, from lowest root to topmost 
9 
