22 
is so especially i in view of the fact that the geographic range, z as far 
as 
plored hammocks of Lak po: owever, the range may 
have n more extended several centuries ago when Florida pos- 
sessed a warmer and nly t ered climate 1 
the middle of the eighteenth century, Bartram! records the occur- 
rence of the royal- palit (Roystonia ret) nearly as far north as 
the Lake George region and his a nt of a combat between 
alligators as he termed them, may esl refer to crocodiles, as 
they vary from spheroidal, often much depressed, ene pyti- 
form to those with a short stout neck. 
It is possible that the pumpkins found by the early travellers 
and pioneer settlers in more temperate North America asa staple 
cultivated crop among the American Indians, were descended 
from our wild Okeechobee pumpkin, through ihe Seminole pump- 
kin as its more or less similar ancestor. 
The Seminoles, as far as we can learn, inherited this esculent 
rosts accompanying ‘‘freezes.’’ The mpkin plants grow 
either in the almost pure humus of the primeval hammocks as 
described and illustrated in a for: er? or on the sandy 
ormer pa fo) 
shores of Lake Okeechobee. Several attempts to grow vines 
1 Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West 
Florida. 1792. 
? The American Museum Journal 18:648-700. 1918. 
