I9I4.] SOUTHEASTERN NORTH AMERICA. 189 



found that birds that have eaten greedily often void them uninjured 

 and others meet with fatalities before the seeds are digested and 

 these constitute by no means unimportant factors in distribution. 

 Clement Reid in his discussion of the origin of the British flora gives 

 an instance of a dead wood-pigeon with beans sprouting from its 

 crop, and when it is remembered what a great percentage of birds 

 meet an untimely end it is conceivable that a single hurricane might 

 readily be the means of introducing new forms from the Antilles 

 upon the Wilcox coast. Other Leguminosse, although more rarely, 

 are dispersed by ocean currents, as is the case in an eminent degree 

 with the modern Entada or snuffbox seabean. 



All of the storms moved from the equator northward, the main 

 ocean currents had the same general direction, while the prevailing 

 winds were easterly so that all of these important factors combined 

 in causing a relatively rapid introduction and spreading of forms 

 along the Wilcox coasts, so that given favorable climatic conditions 

 and many of the forms need not have taken the time to spread from 

 Central or South America along continuous coasts. 



Botanical Character of the Flora. 



That the method by which the bulk of the determinations in the 

 present study are made rests upon real and not fanciful affinities is 

 of vital importance, since the resulting climatic and other physical 

 data are largely controlled by these facts. The case is not as intri- 

 cate or as hopeless as it might seem to the student who remembers the 

 thousand of living and extinct genera. De Candolle estimated the 

 total number of flowering plants to be about 250,000 species. This 

 figure is swollen by the great multiplication of herbaceous species in 

 recent geologic times. The ratio of arborescent to herbaceous types 

 was much greater in the Tertiary than it is at the present time and 

 it seems probable that trees were actually more abundant and 

 varied than in the existing flora. This was certainly true for all 

 Tertiary floras outside the torrid zone and may be readily proved by 

 a consideration of the Eocene floras of North America, the Miocene 

 floras of Europe or to cite an extreme case the Tertiary floras of 

 the Arctic and Antarctic regions. 



While the arborescent flora of the temperate zone is relatively 



