— 172— 



smaller but always widely distant from each other and difficult to find in 

 the high and dense shrubbery of the maritime flora. At Lake Worth, 

 about lOO miles north of Cape Florida the semitropical forest attains a 

 most unusual development extending for 8 or 9 miles on the narrow 

 space between the lake and the sea. In their northward extent along the 

 Indian River these semitropical thickets become smaller and scarcer, one 

 species after another of the semitropical trees disappears and with their 

 food-plants the semitropical insects become gradually scarcer in individuals 

 as well as species. Before reaching Cape Canaveral this peculiar fauna 

 and flora may be said to have disappeared. I desire to emphasize here 

 once more as one of the principal characteristics of ttiis flora and fauna, 

 that north of the Everglades they nowhere appear inland but always close 

 to the shore. Even along the inner bank of the Indian River there are — 

 or rather were — but a very few spots covered with semitropical forest, 

 viz : on the mouth of the St. Lucie and Sebastian Rivers, at the southern 

 end of Merritt's Island and perhaps some others ; but they are now 

 mostly destroyed by cultivation. 



What I have hitherto said of the extent of the semuropical fauna 

 refers only to the eastern and south-eastern coast of Florida. I know 

 nothing from personal experience how far north this fauna extends on the 

 western coast.* In fact the south-western part of Florida south of the 

 Caloosahatchee River is at present the most unknown and least accessible 

 portion of the whole United States and, entomolo.yically, still terra in- 

 cognita. I rely here entirely on a statement by Prof. C. S. Sargent pub- 

 lished in his "Report on the forests of North America"** and quote it 

 herewith ; but I wish to say that long before I saw it I had worked out 

 from my own experience and with the aid of Mr. Hubbard's notes the 

 extent of the semitropical fauna and flora along the south-eastern coast. 

 Says Prof. Sargent: "A group of arborescent species of West Indian 

 origin occupies the narrow strip of coast and islands of Southern Florida. 

 This belt of semitropical vegetation is confined to the immediate neigh- 

 borhood of the coast and to occasional hammocks or islands of high 

 ground situated in the savannahs which cover a great portion of Southern 

 Florida, checking, by the nature of the soil and want of drainage, the 

 spread of forest growth across the peninsula. This semitropical forest 

 belt reaches Cape Malabar on the east, and the shores of Tampa Bay on 

 the west coast, while some of its representatives extend fully two degrees 



* The distribution of semitropical insects on the western coast is facilitated by a 

 counter current which, originating at Cape Florida, runs in a south-westerly direction 

 between the Keys and the mainland to Cape Sable, thence northward along the 

 coast. 



** Tenth Census of the United States, Vol. IX, 1884, p. 6. 



