find it
described by Dr. Chapman under that head, until at last an excellent
woman came to my help with the information that it was "coontie" (_Zamia
integrifolia_), famous as a plant out of which the Southern people made
bread in war time. This confession of botanical amateurishness and
incompetency will be taken, I hope, as rather to my credit than
otherwise; but it would be morally worthless if I did not add the story
of another plant, which, in this same New Smyrna hammock, I frequently
noticed hanging in loose bunches, like blades of flaccid deep green
grass, from the trunks of cabbage palmettos. The tufts were always out
of reach, and I gave them no particular thought; and it was not until I
got home to Massachusetts, and then almost by accident, that I learned
what they were. They, it turned out, _were_ ferns (_Vittaria
lineata_--grass fern), and my discomfiture was complete.

This comparative dearth of birds and flowers was not in all respects a
disadvantage. On the contrary, to a naturalist blessed now and then with
a supernaturalistic mood, it made the place, on occasion, a welcome
retreat. Thus, one afternoon, as I remember, I had been reading Keats,
the only book I had brought with me,--not counting manuals, of course,
which come under another head,--and by and by started once more for the
pine lands by the way of the cotton-shed hammock, "to see what I could
see." But poetry had spoiled me just then for anything like scientific
research, and as I waded through the ankle-deep sand I said to myself
all at once, "No, no! What do I care for another new bird? I want to see
the beauty of the world." With that I faced about, and, taking a side
track, made as directly as possible for the river road. There I should
have a mind at ease, with no unfamiliar, tantalizing bird note to set my
curiosity on edge, nor any sand through which to be picking my steps.

The river road is paved with oyster-shells. If any reader thinks that
statement prosaic or unimportant, then he has never lived in southern
Florida. In that part of the world all new-comers have to take
walking-lessons; unless, indeed, they have already served an
apprenticeship on Cape Cod, or in some other place equally arenarious.
My own lesson I got at second hand, and on a Sunday. It was at New
Smyrna, in the village. Two women were behind me, on their way home from
church, and one of them was complaining of the sand, to which she was
not yet used. "Yes," sa