THE PLANTING OF OUR FLORA 149 



we have only ten of them in Florida and two of 

 those are possibly endemic. I cannot believe 

 that any substantial part of our tropical flora has 

 been planted in this way. Most of the drupes 

 and berries in Cuba ripen in the summer and 

 autumn. Our migrating birds go to that island 

 in the fall and remain through the winter (or pass 

 farther south), returning to Florida in the spring 

 when very few such fruits are on the trees. 



We have here many tropical herbaceous plants 

 the seeds of which are freely eaten by birds but 

 which are as freely digested. Such seeds, then, 

 could not under ordinary circumstances have 

 been bird-transported to our territory. It is 

 possible in very rare cases that birds having eaten 

 such seeds in Cuba might at once fly across to 

 Florida and be killed immediately on arriving. 

 But even so it is questionable whether such seeds 

 would germinate after having been acted upon by 

 gastric juices. 



But there exists another fatal objection against 

 the birds having planted any great portion of our 

 tropical flora. I have shown in another chapter 

 that there are three distinct areas of dry-land life 

 in Lower Florida and that they exist because they 



