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FrerRN GROTTOES OF FLORIDA 73 
few miles farther north, known as Britton’s Caves. 
She writes me that the neighborhood used to be infested 
with ‘‘moonshiners,”’ and an innocent stranger was once 
killed near there on suspicion of being a revenue officer. 
In January, 1909, I walked from Croom to Istachatta 
one afternoon, and asked one of the old residents of the 
latter place for information about the fern grottoes. 
He told me how to get there, but warned me of the 
danger of getting lost. For that reason, and also be- 
cause of the lateness of the hour, I did not attempt to 
go to the spot then; and over six years elapsed before 
the opportunity came for some one to accompany me 
there. 
In the fall of 1913 the U. 8. Bureau of Soils published 
a soil survey of the “Ocala area,” corresponding with 
four topographic maps of the U. 5. Geological Survey 
published about 18 years before. The southern bound- 
ary of this survey is lat. 28° 45’, a little north of Floral 
City. The soil survey of Hernando County, pub- 
lished in 1915, stops at the county line just north of 
Istachatta. All the fern grottoes, as far as known, are 
in the space of six miles between the two surveys, and 
are thus not yet represented on either topographic or 
soil maps. There seems to be absolutely no mention 
of them in geological literature, and apparently no 
geologist had ever seen them until the time mentioned 
in the next paragraph. 
On the morning of March 6, 1915, accompanied by 
the state geologist of Florida and his chief assistant, I 
left the southbound train at Istachatta, which is in the 
northeastern corner of Hernando County. New direc- 
tions for reaching the fern place were easily obtained, 
and we walked north along the railroad about two 
miles, to a flag-station called Pineola, then east about 
a mile into the woods, which brought us nearly to the 
Withlacoochee River, opposite Bay Hill, Sumter 
