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such a state of perfection — save perhaps in California. 

 The principal forest growth is pine, but immediately 

 around Thomasville the surface is rolling or gently un- 

 dulating instead of level as in most of the Piney Woods 

 region. Trees and herbaceous plants are numerous and 

 varied, though within a mile extensive pine forests and 

 turpentine farms can be reached. A trail of white sand 

 is often the only suggestion of a right-of-way through 

 the brown expanse, though this may suddenly turn into 

 a conventional road hedged in by shrubbery and inter- 

 sected by just such trickling, murmuring streams as 

 would be found in mountainous regions, rendering the 

 scene just left all the more unreal. Nothing could better 

 illustrate this kaleideiscopic effect of the scenery than the 

 lovely drive encircling the town two miles in every direc- 

 tion, intersected at short intervals by many roads from 

 the "hub " like spokes in a wheel. 



In this single drive the difference in topography and 

 geology which furnishes the habitat peculiar to each 

 species is apparent and the botanist, at least, understands 

 the diversity of the flora — a mountain flower and one 

 indigenuous to the southern coast side by side — the meet- 

 ing of the North and South, as it were. Not so with the 

 Ferns, they are more exacting, their environments must 

 be just to their liking. There are no rocks to shelter and 

 keep them cool, but of those finding conditions suitable 

 to their needs, water for their feet and sun for their 

 heads, there are quantities. A few there are that merely 

 demand shade and a wealth of deep leaf mould wherein 

 to luxuriate. Such is Phcgopteris hexagonoptera, our 

 broad beech fern, which finds a congenial home in rich 

 woodlands where the Magnolia grandiflora towers out of 

 sight and the beech grows to giant proportions, their 

 branches intertwining high up to form a lofty ceiling. 

 A cool open space is the result penetrated by just a glance 

 of the sunrays sufficient for the tender green coloring 

 of this shade loving fern, and the dense carpet of leaves 

 is just the needed foothold for the running roots so 

 slightly anchored. Where they reach the height of per- 



