36 



EXPERIMENTS IN THE BREEDING OF CERIONS. 



specimens dead among the material gathered on this date, and we 

 thought it possible that this might be due to the too luxuriant growth 

 of Sesuvium, and therefore deemed it best to move the colony. We 

 placed 225 living specimens near the southern part of the westerly one 

 of two foundation walls north of the cistern, and marked the situation 

 with a stake. 



On April 22, 1914, this new colony was still in force, but we were 

 unable to find any young individuals. The old planting was completely 

 overrun with rank vegetation, even more rank than on the previous 

 year; in fact it was impossible to determine if any specimens had sur- 

 vived. 



In May 1916 the Cerions were doing well at both plantings. We 

 gathered 18 adult living specimens of the first generation of Florida- 

 grown individuals and 31 of those originally imported at the second 

 planting. The Florida-grown individuals were measured and marked 

 and placed about 5 feet east of the stone wall, which is a remnant of a 

 house on the east end of the key, while we replanted the Bahama 

 material a little west of the center of the second stone wall. 



The original planting, which was completely swamped by a rank 

 growth of vegetation during the past two years, seemed to have sur- 

 vived quite well. This year the drought was so great that the grass was 

 dried up to a large extent. Even the cacti had a shriveled appearance 



and this enabled us to discover 29 of the originally planted Cerions, 

 49 adult Florida-grown individuals, and 15 tips. We planted the 

 Florida-grown individuals in one place at the inner edge of the grass, 

 about 45 feet east and a httle to the left of the stone wall, looking land- 

 ward. 



In 1917 and 1918 this colony was not visited. 



On January 21, 1919, when we again visited Indian Key, the old 

 plantation was completely swamped with a growth of Sesuvium, 



