Taylor. Endemism in the Bahama Flora. 525 



are almost painfully new and have but one endemic genus, the rest of the 

 132 endemics should be overwhelmingly herbaceous. How far short they 

 come of being so is shown below. 



Percentages of Woody and Herbaceous Species in the Non-endemic and 

 Endemic Elements of the Bahama Flora. 



The endemic element of the Bahama flora is thus seen neither to fit 

 into the ' Age and Area ' theory of Willis, nor to accord with the theories 

 of Sinnott and Bailey. They have argued that endemism is a criterion of 

 antiquity, particularly where that endemism is generic, when it is sure to be 

 represented mostly by woody species. With only a single endemic genus 

 and on notoriously youthful islands, 57-5 per cent, of the Bahama endemics 

 are woody ! In other words, during the time that these endemic species 

 have been developing, considerably more woody plants have arisen than 

 herbs, notwithstanding that in the total non-endemic flora, from which they 

 sprang, the above percentages are reversed. 



Recording the failure of Bahama endemics to support the contention 

 as to 'Age and Area' or that of 'endemism as a criterion of antiquity', 

 apparently puts upon us the burden of accounting for the unquestioned 

 facts of their distribution in some other way. The islands have been so 

 thoroughly explored by the authors of ' The Bahama Flora ' and their 

 associates that what follows regarding the dispersal of the endemic plants 

 of the archipelago may be accepted with greater certainty than is usually 

 possible in such cases. 



Origin and Distribution of Bahama Endemics. 



(a) The Physical Features of the Islands and their Bearing upon 



the Flora. 



The dispersal of the wild plants over the archipelago has first of all been 

 affected by the structure of the islands. As the accompanying map (p. 531) 

 shows, there are really three groups of islands : (a) those that outcrop from 

 the Little Bahama Bank, the larger of which are the islands of Great 

 Bahama and Abaco ; (b) those that outcrop from the Great Bahama Bank, 

 notably New Providence, Eleuthera, Cat, Great Exuma, Long, and Andros 

 islands ; (c) a group of scattered and isolated islands, the chief of which 

 are Watlings, Crooked, Acklin, Mariguana, Inagua, Caicos, and Turks islands. 

 The outstanding fact about these three groups of islands is that those on 

 the Little Bahama Bank have several times been connected among them- 

 selves, for the water on the bank is scarcely 20 feet deep, and evidence of 



M m 



