106 Naturalist at Large 



cipation days the planters perforce moved away and the 

 freed slaves, being left behind, took the easiest way and as 

 land grew up to brush they cleared and recleared by burn- 

 ing it off, until now on such islands as Cat Island, Long 

 Island, Crooked Island, Acklins Island, Eleuthera, Exuma, 

 Mariguana, and Great Inagua, only the most pitiful rem- 

 nants of gardens remain. The considerable population nat- 

 urally has to support itself to a large extent from the sea. 



Many of the resident birds peculiar to the islands are 

 extremely local and restricted in distribution. I think par- 

 ticularly of the beautiful Nye's woodpecker. This occurs 

 in a sort of swale in the Victoria Hills Section of Watlings 

 Island. Here there is a growth of large gumbo-limbo trees 

 (Bursera guttifera). The area is so restricted that I doubt 

 if the total population of this lovely species amounts to more 

 than thirty to forty pairs. These big trees are no doubt a 

 good sample of what once grew more or less everywhere. 

 Elsewhere the forests were weakened by fire. The big 

 trees not actually destroyed by the fire itself were re- 

 moved by the devastating hurricanes which pass over these 

 unfortunate islands more frequently than elsewhere. 



How have the creatures moved from one island to an- 

 other? The number of genera of reptiles with representa- 

 tive species on the various islands is really very considerable. 

 However, I think this not really difficult to explain. There 

 has been some fortuitous dispersal by flotsam and jet- 

 sam motivated by hurricanes no doubt. But during several 

 glacial epochs when a large quantity of oceanic water was 

 tied up in the form of polar ice the surface of the sea wa? 

 certainly lowered sufficiently to change the Bahama Archi- 

 pelago to its present condition. I believe this made large 



