THE YOUNG 
SCIENTIST. 363 
place, will retain its beautiful green color 
for several weeks. A few weeks before 
Christmas, hundreds of poor boys and 
girls are hard at work gathering and 
winding the ground-pine into roping, 
and by this means earn enough money 
with whicii to purchase warm winter 
cloth iug or pay of£ the taxes on some 
Fig, 3.— GROUND-PINE. 
small fruit farm. So my merry young 
readers, when you are festooning your 
homes or Sunday-school room with this 
beautiful Jersey evergreen, think how 
very many little girls and boys have been 
made happy by gathering and making it 
up for the boys and girls of New York 
City. 
From Florida large quantities of 
Spanish moss are sent north a few days 
previous to Thanksgiving and Christmas. 
This beautiful moss answers a double 
purpose. First as a soft and dry material 
in which to pack the luscious Florida 
oranges, and also that of a beautiful and 
graceful evergreen for Christmas times, 
the cool greyish-green color of which 
contrasts well with the rich dark greens 
of our northern evergreen. This curious 
Spanish moss, as it is called (though it is 
not a true moss at all, but belongs to the 
pine-apple family or the Tillmidsias), has 
also a considerable commercial value, it 
being used very extensively by uphol- 
sterers for stuffing mattresses, sofas, etc. 
The process of preparing the- moss so as 
to rid the inner, woody, horsehair-like 
fibre of its soft outer coating or "bark," 
is a very slow and tedious one. After 
gathering it from the trees of the live-oak 
on which it grows (for like the mistletoe, 
it is a parasite, though it does not live on 
the sap of the tree as do the mistletoes, 
but obtains its support from the moisture 
of its surroundings and the atmos- 
phere), it is buried in the ground, or is 
placed in running water, where it is al- 
lowed to remain until the outer covering 
or "bark "is more or less rotted; it is 
then dried and beaten, and baled, after 
which it is sent north to be ginned. The 
Fig. 4.— FLORIDA MOSS. 
ginning removes all small particles of 
" bark " that still remain attached to the 
fibre, and at the same time, clears it of 
dust and foreign substances. It now 
looks very much like coarse and black 
liorse-hair, and when in a mass, has great 
sijring to it, almost equal to curled horse- 
hair, and is worth fifteen cents a pound. 
You would never recognize this material 
as the once beautiful Spanish moss of 
Florida. 
