anoe glides
down upon their haunts.

[Illustration: MOSS-DRAPED LIVE-OAKS.]

Every strange fowl and every hideous reptile, every singular plant and
every tangled jungle, will tell the American boy how far he is to the
south. Florida is, in fact, his corner of the tropics; and the clear
waters of its rivers, stained to brown and wine-color with the juices
of a tropical vegetation, will tell him, if he reads nature's book, how
different the sandy soil of the South is from the yellow mold of the
great Western plains.

Such a boy hardly need ask the conductor how far west he is if he can
catch a glimpse of one of the rivers. All the rivers of the plains are
alike full of yellow mud, because the soil of the plains melts at the
touch of water. These are our spendthrift rivers, full to the banks at
times, but most of the year desperately in need of water. It is only
with the greatest effort that they can keep their places in the summer:
there is just a scanty thread of water strung along a great, rambling
bed of sand, to restrain Dame Nature from revoking their licenses to run
and turning them into cattle-ranches.

No wonder that fish refuse to have anything to do with such streams, and
refuse tempting offers of free worms, free transportation, and
protection from the fatal nets. Fancy trying to raise a family of little
fish, and not knowing one day where water is coming from the next!

Not but what there is water enough at times; only, those rivers of the
great plains, like the Platte and the Kansas and the Arkansas, are so
wasteful of their supply in the spring that by July they are gasping for
a shower. So, part of the year they revel in luxury, and during the rest
they go shabby--like shiftless people.

But the irrigation engineers have lately discovered something wonderful
about even these despised rivers. During the very driest seasons, when
the stream is apparently quite dry, there is still a great body of water
running in the sand. Like a vast sponge, the sand holds the water, yet
it flows continually, just as if it were in plain sight, but more slowly
of course. The volume may be estimated by the depth and breadth of the
sand. One pint of it will hold three quarters of a pint of water. This
is called the underground flow, and is peculiar to this class of rivers.
By means of ditches this water may be brought to the surface for
irrigation.

Scattered among the foot-hills of the Rockies are rivers still more
wil