odor. Bees are swarming around them in large numbers. Even in the driest places, where 

 the sand looks almost as white as snow, and where only stunted pines and oaks grow, 

 we may find some beautiful plants. The sand rose-mary or sand heathy a pretty and 

 peculiar heath-like shrub with reddish flowers, grows in abundance. The dwarf red bay^ 

 with very aromatic leaves flourishes in such places to perfection. In these open pine- 

 woods our eyes can roam often for more than half a mile in every direction. The many 

 small lakes and the orange groves on their banks add variety to the landscape. As yet 

 we do not find many ornamental plants in the gardens. The blossoming orange trees, 

 though exceedingly sweet-scented, are not as showy as the flowering apple trees of the 

 North. Sometimes our eyes meet gorgeous masses of fiery orange color, being enchant- 

 ingly beautiful in the distance. On coming nearer we find beds of the Barbadoes lily or 

 orange amaryllis' in full bloom. This is, indeed, a sight worth a long journey. From all 

 directions the harmonious and sprightly song of the Mockingbird falls on our ear. The 

 Carolina. Wren carols from almost every thicket, and in the tree tops and among the 

 bushes countless numbers of migrants, on their way to the North, are hopping around 

 in quest of food. In winter the palmetto thickets as well as the dense shrubbery of the 

 adjoining hammocks are swarming with northern birds, which here find an abundance of 

 food and excellent shelter. Among the summer birds I expected to find the Cardinal 

 Redbird in large numbers, but I only noticed a few. Florida is very poor in songbirds, 

 compared with Texas and the other Gulf States. Painted Buntings, Blue Grosbeaks, 

 Chats, Orchard Orioles, Lark Finches, Scissor-tailed Flycatchers, so common in almost 

 every garden and woodland in south-eastern Texas, do not breed in southern Florida. 

 In the pine-woods where the saw-palmetto and also the dwarf-palmetto* form 

 dense thickets, and where the intervening space is covered with low^ dense huckle-berry 

 bushes, andromedas, and grasses, the Pixe-woods Sparrow is an abundant bird, 

 occumng from southern Florida to southern Georgia in all suitable localities. I met 

 with it for the first time near Jacksonville and a few days later in Orange County. Its 

 favorite haunts are always the palmetto thickets of the flat woods, which it occupies 

 with the White-eyed Towhee or Joree and the Carolina Wren. So common is this 

 Sparrow in such places that the boys call it the Palmetto Bird or Palmetto Sparrow. 

 Were it not for the fine, loud, and clear song, the plainly colored and shy bird w^ould 

 be easily overlooked. Its grayish color harmonizes so perfectly with the sandy soil, the 

 dry leaves, and the dead grasses that it requires a sharp eye to discover it and to follow 

 its mouse-like movements among the dense herbage. Sometimes it sings for twenty 

 minutes or more in the lower limbs of a pine, but as soon as it finds itself observed it 

 dives down into the thickets, and it is with difliculty chased from its safe retreat. In 

 the neighborhood of orange groves it is very numerous, but it rarely mounts an orange 

 tree to carol its song. When strolling around in the lonely pine-woods I met with this 

 bird, which is almost as conspicuous by its song as the Vesper Sparrow in Wisconsin. 

 Long before I had made its acquaintance the song was familiar to my ear. When I for 

 the first time heard the lay I thought it was the performance of a Wren or some other 

 insectivorous bird, as I was unable to see the songster, nor could I say from what direc- 

 tion the music came, the notes being exceedingly ventriloquial. Sometimes they seemed to 



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