The Sage of Biscayne Bay 73


 place one must be alone to enjoy the full beauty and sweet-
 ness of it all. Even the presence of the most congenial friend or
 lover of nature is distracting and in a sense a disturbing ele-
 ment. Alone with uncovered head I bared my life, my all to the
 Great Power of the Universe, call it Nature, God, Jehovah, Al-
 lah, Brahma or whatever you will, and reverently worshipped.'a

 One of Simpson's deeply felt convictions was that plants are some-
how sentient beings. In In Lower Florida Wilds, after elaborating at
length on the wonders of plant adaptation, he remarked:

 It seems to me that there is a soul throughout nature, that the
 animals, and I like to believe, the plants, to a certain extent,
 think... .A palm sends its growing stem deep into the earth and
 buries its vitals to protect them from fire; the mangrove raises
 itself high on stilted roots in order that it may live above the
 water and breathe; an orchid perfects a complicated device to
 compel honey-loving insects to cross-fertilize its pollen.... If the
 work of man is the result of thought, that of animals and plants
 must be so in some lesser degree.49

 In reference to the way the strangler fig gradually eliminates
and replaces its host tree:

 It looks very much like the result of planning and reasoning, of
 a deliberate selfishness of the worst sort. The helpless tree
 which is being crushed and strangled in the embrace of the fig,
 the long, lithe roots thrusting themselves into every crevice,
 wrapping tighter and tighter about their victim, remind one of
 Laocoon and the serpents.50

 In his writing, Simpson continually returned to "thinking" nature. In
Out of Doors in Florida, he addressed the tendency of some plants
to propagate themselves by sprouts as well as seeds:

 The idea of sprouts seems to me like a stroke of genius. Like
 the invention of the steam engine, the telegraph and telephone,
 these bring a boon to the human race. It will be noticed that I