The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-08-28
LIFE IN FLORIDA.
It Does Not Ensure superfluous Flesh.
 But It Is Healthfui.
Florida TImes-Unien


 From the Florida Times-Unfen.
 As soon as man learned to wear wool ems some of the noblest races made pro- longed excursion northward. They are only now getting back to their original attitudes, in Florida, in California and Australia.
 Others of equally noble stature and in- tellect did not participate for long in that excursion, but drlfted down inSo Spain and settled in the land of the olive and the orange.
 In the recent war in Cuba the gigantic American soldier lowered a mead above the spanlard or the Hispano-cuban, and was muscular Tn proportion. Eighteen hundred years ago the ancestors of the two. practically the same race, were marching side by side in northern Ger many, intent on the destruction of the Roman empire.
 Since that time the ancestors of the American have been staying wild boars and fighting the devils of heathendom in the frozen forests of the north, while the ancestors of the Spaniard have been luxuriating in Andalusia. The North man was compelled to exert fierce mus cular energy-to maintain his animal heat. Today, richly fed with meats and clothed with wooiens. swollen with pride and strength. he stands a head above the descendant of him whom a kindly heaven warmed and nourished. Concede him 25 per cent more energy than the latter sim ply as a result of the necessity of keep ing warm for 1000 years in a hovei.
 Warmth does not soften muscle; it hardens and toughens 1t. The sqnint-eyed Aztec, bowed together until his knees sa- lute his chin, his molars worn to the gums, lives 12o years on corn and peppers and sunshine. He will seize by the neck and shake to pieces a rattler that would have pierced the clumsy American to his death.
 Buchan says that exposure to the suns rays in the tropics Is, on account of the invisible screen of vapor which envelops us, not attended with the Intense heat which might be expected. Nothing is more common than to hear an old West Indian complain on Broadway or Beacon street of the intolerable heat of the sum shine. There is no protective awning of vapor Capt. Scoresby relates that in the polar regions the heat of the sun would liquefy the pitch on the vessels seams, while on the other side ice would be forming
 This rapid solar radiation in northern attitudes Is the fruitful mother of pneu- monia and rheumatism. It produces vicis- situdes of climate which impel men to tremendous activity resistant to cold, with resultant full circulation, rud- dy complexion and tendency toward heart disease and paralysis.
 On the other hand, bathed in a mel low vaporous warmth which never smites with sunstroke, never blights with the desiccating east wind, the southern dweller has seasoned and hardened sinews which are tough as cordage. His body is large enough for his necessities, he carries no surplus 20 per cent of mus ce as a frost-ighter. The bloody energy of the berserker was naught, for it had no object.
 The ever-crowdng and thickening masses of population and the strong competition of money-making will en- force in Florida the industry of North America. 1t is here already. A young Floridian born and reared in St. Johns one of the lowest and fiattest of the counties with the almost reasoning ma chimes of the times. cultivates 60 acres of potatoes and pockets $7Oo0 at the sea sons winding up.
 We have seen, on a presumably mala- rious lake a cordon of 30 white men, month after month. dredging the vege- table deposits from the lake bottom and hauling them away into orange groves, with the steady-going industry of brig ade of laborers on the Erie railroad. There was no strike, no malaria, no sun stroke, and in the article of the move ment of cubic yards the operation was of North American proportions.