Florida Swamps and Forests 
of tenderness and love as is bestowed on angels 
in heaven or saints on earth. 
I think that most of the antipathies which 
haunt and terrify us are morbid productions of 
ignorance and weakness. I have better thoughts 
of those alligators now that I have seen them 
at home. Honorable representatives of the 
great saurians of an older creation, may you 
long enjoy your lilies and rushes, and be 
blessed now and then with a mouthful of ter- 
ror-stricken man by way of dainty! 
Found a beautiful lycopodium to-day, and 
many grasses in the dry sunlit places called 
“barrens,” “hummocks,” “savannas,” etc. 
Ferns also are abundant. What a flood of heat 
and light is daily poured out on these beauti- 
ful openings and intertangled woods! “The 
land of the sunny South,” we say, but no 
part of our diversified country is more shaded 
and covered from sunshine. Many a sunny 
sheet of plain and prairie break the continuity 
of the forests of the North and West, and the 
forests themselves are mostly lighted also, 
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