148 IN LOWER FLORIDA WILDS 



in another chapter I give my reasons for believing 

 this an error. Many tropical trees and shrubs 

 produce berries and drupes, the seeds of which are 

 indigestible but the surrounding pulp is relished 

 and eagerly devoured by birds. The seeds may 

 be carried long distances before being ejected, and 

 as they retain their vitality they may germinate 

 and grow in distant regions. Guppy has written 

 his observations in the Pacific, and the burden of 

 it seems to be to prove that birds do almost all 

 the carrying of seeds across oceans. He believes 

 they have transported many plant species from 

 the American tropics to the Hawaiian Islands, a 

 distance of three thousand miles. It seems to me 

 more probable that most of the American plants 

 now found in the Pacific were transported as float- 

 ing seeds or on timber at the time when an Atlantic 

 current passed westward through what is now the 

 Isthmus of Panama. 



There are hundreds of trees and shrubs in Cuba 

 which bear edible drupes and berries, but very 

 few of them have become established on our shores. 

 For example, there are more than seventy species 

 of Eugenias and their allies in that near-by island 

 which have fruits adapted to bird transport, yet 



