600 BOWMAN— ECOLOGY AND 



on account of the sandy beaches on the outer shore. In rich ahuvial 

 soil of the river hammock along the Miami River, the Rhisophora 

 and other trees form a jungle seven to eight meters tall, while back 

 in the Everglades, Rhisophora only in the form of small bushes 

 were observed scattered in the saw grass, Marisciis jamaicensc 

 (Crantz) Britton. This has also been observed by Harshberger 

 (144, loc. cit.) and Dr. J. K. SmalF^'' who has published voluminous 

 reports and floras of the region, and has kindly furnished some 

 photographs, illustrating this peculiar condition of the mangrove 

 here and on Andros Island in the Bahamas (Fig. i, PI. VIII.). This 

 island is interesting to us because it is the place that Catesby de- 

 scribed in his early chronicle. At Boca Grande, Rhisophora seed- 

 lings were observed starting to fill in a thickly vegetated salt 

 meadow, which became flooded at high tide ; this marsh was covered 

 largely with Batis mariiima, Scsuz'iinn portulacastrum, Borrichia, 

 etc., and among them were many thrifty young Rhisophora seed- 

 lings. It is supposed that these seedlings were carried into this 

 meadow by unusually high tides. 



Experimental Data. 



Harshberger's experiments {loc. cit., 144, p. 79) suggested a line 

 of work on the station of Rhisophora in estuaries which have been 

 carried out in Biscayne Bay and the Miami River. Since these ex- 

 perimeters have been made by the writer, Guppy's book {loc. cit., 

 143) has appeared and this naturalist also has made some study of 

 this subject in Fiji and Ecuador. In Fiji, Guppy found that where 

 both R. mucronata and R. mangle grew luxuriantly on the coast the 

 latter followed up the estuaries and river banks. Despite the fact 

 then that R. mangle is a salt swamp plant it apparently can adapt 

 itself to practically fresh-water conditions as the transpiration 

 cultures in this work show for individual cases. Dr. Small also 

 has told the writer that he has observed in the Everglades and the 

 Bahamas Rhisophora growing, by the square mile area, miles from 

 any salt water. In the face of these cultural experiments on a small 

 laboratory scale and the observations of Small, the evidence afforded 



^■■''' Small, J. K., "Exploration in the Everglades and on the Florida 

 Kej-s," Jour. N. Y. Dot. Garden, 15, 1914, 69-79. 



