210 Scott oh the Birds of the Caloosahatchie Reffion. [J"'y 



These mangrove swamps, though conspicuous from the river, 

 do not extend back for more than a very short distance, and are 

 not of sutlicient area anywhere to afford breeding grounds for 

 aquatic birds. But at most points along this part of the stream 

 the pine forests come down close to the water ; there is some 

 salt marsh, especially in the vicinity of Punta Rassa, and at points 

 a fringe of cabbage palmettos or mangroves separates the pine 

 woods from the absolute edge of the water. All through these pine 

 forests are 'bay heads' of greater or less extent, the largest covei- 

 ing but a few acres, and cypress swamps, sometimes small, and 

 again extending for many miles in length, though only a few 

 hundred yards wide, defining generally ponds, or chains of ponds 

 running into one another, as the case may be. These two vari- 

 ations are the only breaks to the monotony of the low, flat, pine 

 forests of this region, and maybe looked upon, from an ornitholog- 

 ical standpoint, as islands, whose inhabitants make excursions into 

 the sea — the pine forests — which surrounds them, but who are 

 really in the main dwellers in the two kinds of localities referred 

 to briefly above. 



The land for the whole river region visited, is highest immedi- 

 ately at the river, or just back from it, and becomes low and very 

 flat a mile or moi'e away from the stream. This applies to the 

 stream nearly as far up as Fort Thompson, where different condi- 

 tions exist which will be described later. 



Twenty-five miles above Punta Rassa, the stream begins to 

 grow narrower, and in two or three miles more it is rarely over 

 a hundred yards wide, is influenced but little by the tide, and its 

 water is always fresh, and there is a very appreciable and constant 

 current toward the Gulf, gradually growing swifter as Lake Flirt 

 is approached. 



The pine woods no longer come out to the bank of the river, 

 but a kind of hammock growth is constant along its shores, and 

 the most conspicuous growth in these hammocks, wiiich increase 

 in area as the river is ascended, is the cabbage palmetto, though 

 the other trees generally found in the hammocks of Florida are 

 present in varying proportions, the one exception being the mag- 

 nolia, M. grandiflora^ which is noticeably absent from the entire 

 'Caloosa Region.' 



Leaving the details of this upper river country to be described 

 from time to time in the following pages, as becomes essential 



