THE FLORIDA KEYS 49 



on making a search for these palms three years ago 

 I found the spot on which they stood as bare as a 

 prairie. On some of the Upper Keys the hammock 

 was cut in order that its owners might plant pine- 

 apples. In places the surface of the islands was 

 formerly a bed of broken rock and coral and on 

 this the forest eventually sprung. Ages after- 

 wards the rocky floor became overlaid with a deep 

 coating of leaf mold, the patient work of nature in 

 transforming the abundant growth into a fertile 

 soil. As soon as the forest was destroyed the 

 roots began to decay, the soil washed down 

 through the bed of loose porous rock, and in five 

 years nothing was left but the old original stony 

 fields. Finally the pineapple crops were no longer 

 profitable, failing as the soil departed. Now 

 comes the experiment of lime trees, planted either 

 on these bare rocky beds or in the virgin forest 

 cut to receive them. Thus the hammocks on the 

 keys are being rapidly destroyed and will soon be 

 a thing of the past. 



On other parts of these islands there is only a 

 dense, tropical scrub, much like that of the Ba- 

 hamas. The floor is of the sharpest, most irregu- 

 lar limestone with almost no soil. Gumbo limbo 



