and a more or less scrubby growth of black and red oaks, with a 

 sprinkling of hickory, form the second growth on the denuded 

 dry pine land. These furnish the supply of hard fire-wood. The 

 growth of these trees on the poor looking lands is indeed sur- 

 prising, forming, after fifteen or twenty years, when protected 

 from fire, fine large groves. The water ash, growing with the 

 sweet bay and juniper, in the low, inundated swamps, must be 

 mentioned as one of the trees furnishing much of the fire wood. 

 The light, yet tenaceous, wood of the sweet bay, is much used for 

 broom handles. The grand and sober monotony that charac- 

 terizes the pine forest, finds a pleasant relief in the thickets and 

 glades of evergreen shrubs and various smaller trees which fringe 

 the water courses and swamps. The red bay, sweet bay, small 

 gum tree, wax myrtle, with a dense growth of the ti-ti, inter- 

 spersed by -da-noons, hollys, and red maple, intertwined by a va- 

 riety of climbers and vines, thorny, like those belonging to the 

 different kinds of smilax, adorned with flowers, as the yellow jes- 

 samine, the graceful wistaria, and peculiar crossvine, form impreg- 

 nable thickets, the home of the wild cat, the panther, and the 

 bear. The lands above high water, in the maratime plains of the 

 pine region, with a soil richer in vegetable mould, are the home 

 of the lofty magnolias, the live oak, water oak, associated with 

 the pond pine. These are called hammock lands. They harbor 

 an undergrowth of shrubbery unsurpassed in variety and beauty. 

 There the sweet illicium, and the calycanthus, or spice shrub, are 

 found, with rich blooming andromedas, blueberries, azalias, and 

 the gorgeously blooming kalmia, or sheepslaurel. There the fra- 

 grant storax shrubs, the delicate halesia and fringe tree, with the 

 cyrilla, stuartia and clethra, unfold their snowy flowers, with 

 many others, delighting the eye, by the richness of their bloom, 

 from the earliest beginning of the spring to the end of the sum- 

 mer, offering a lasting feast to the bee, which for the largest part 

 of the year is here found to gather the sweet treasures, distilled 

 in the flowery cups. As a honey producing country, this district 

 can be scarcely rivaled. 



Where the limestones and the marls of the tertiary and cre- 

 taceous formation begin to prevail, free from the cover of sandy 

 drift soil, the second forest region of the State is entered. Here 

 the evergreens give way to the largely preponderating trees with 

 deciduous leaves, and the pine is confined to the poor ridges and 

 thinnest soils. The forest growth is originally interrupted by 

 more or less extensive savannas. The post oak covers, in exten- 

 sive tracts, the stiffer calcareous soils. White oaks, the overcup 



