The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1921-04-22
The FgOwers and Birds of
Florida

veritable masses of honeysuckIe and
thorn bushes and lantana. I have
often wondered why flowers were not
shipped north from Tallahassee by
the car load under refrigeration the
same as other products of the farm
The natural flora of Florida is album
dant and varied, and in giong about
one must look UP as well as down, for
there are flowers in tall trees and
! tiny buds and blooms peek out every
where in the profuseness of green on
the ground, often a tangle of vines
and shrubbery. The palmetto, of
course, is everywhere, adding beauty
and coziness to the landscape. A pee
ularity of the palmetto is that it has
| its greatest diameter when it is young,
when it bulges out with Ieafy stems,
which in time fall off and a clean uni
form and barkless trunk is left, with a
feather duster like top high in the
air. The ferns are fond of them and
often cluster about them with fronds
| looking as if set in vases The pine
tree, too is always in evidence in
Florida
"Let other bards their harps attune,
To sing of gold and courts and
kings,
But leave to me the voice of June,
The music that the pine tree sings
One might think there are more
varieties of trees in our state than
any other in the Union, having in the
south part, many kinds approaching
/ the mahogany in value. The cypress
is here with its strange knees and thu
water and live oaks are glorious trees.
There are trees in Florida not
known to botanists anywhere else In
the world.
The birds of Florida at one time in
cluded many SPECIES and were multitu-
dinous in number. The pot hunter and
the call for plumes and feathers in
the millinery trade have depleted the
supply. The little green paraquet has
entirely disappeared, and other vari.
cites are going, regardless of the es
tablished fact they maintain the bal
ance of nature in the struggle againsf
insect life so destructive to vegetation.
1T is the opinion OF experts that were
the birds to suddenly disappear the
cultivated gardens and fields could
not survive the .ravages Of insect
pests and famine would face the
world. There are many kinds of birds
yet found in Florida, more in the
southern part than anywhere else
with rookeries populous with feather
ed creatures.
The federal government has dozen
bird reservations in the state. a sixth
OF the entire number in the Union,
and that indicates we have the birds
here. The birds live together aar-
moniously as average human beings.
From the rookeries and reservations
and forest colonies they fly in daily
search of food, in main part of in
sects and weed seeds, and return to
feed their young, sometimes the moth,
err returns with wound from gun
and in pain awaits recovery, and
sometimes she does not return and
the young. lingeringly and pitifully
die in their nests.
What would our woodlands be with
out the flight Of these winged police
men of the air in their search for In
sects dangerous-to man. and of their
songs? 1t must have been a hooking
bird Of which Byron said:
+ "A light broke in upon my soul
It was the carol of bird:
It ceased and then it came again,
| The sweetest song ear ever
heard.s
| Not long ago / saw boy with a
dead hooking bird. He had shot it, a
ten cent boy with a two dollar air
gun had killed q winged miracle OF
song. The father of that boy should