the mud. In fact, we became so accustomed to an amphibious 

 mode of life that several of the party complained that they did 

 not feel natural when deprived of the aquatic stage for any length 

 of time. 



We have now accumulated enough knowledge of the flora of 

 these islands of coral sand-rock in the everglades to make the 

 solution of many problems, both general and local, very interest- 

 ing. This chain of everglade keys is a miniature of the Florida 

 Keys, both in its crescent shape and its flora, and also of the 

 West Indies in the character of its vegetation. It is surrounded 

 by the everglades, except where the upper islands touch Biscayne 

 Bay at points from Miami to Cutler. Before these islands were 

 elevated to their present altitude, they were probably surrounded 

 by a shallow sea just as the Florida Keys are at the present 

 time. This being the case, we can easily account for the tropical 

 American flora now inhabiting them. After sufficient elevation 

 had taken place, the surrounding sea was transformed into the 



ing favorable, the plants of the flora of northern peninsular 

 Florida advanced southward and naturally took complete posses- 

 sion of the area that was formerly the sea, thus surrounding and 

 isolating the wholly different flora of the islands. In fact, the 

 two floras are so sharply delimited that one can often stand with 

 one foot on plants characteristic of the high northern regions and 

 the other on plants restricted to the tropics. It is not an un- 

 common experience to see colonies of plants common in Canada, 

 such as the arrowarum {Peltandra), the lizard's tail (Saumrus) 

 and the ground-nut {Apios), growing side by side with tropical 

 palms, cycads, orchids and bromeliads. 



The total area of these islands is perhaps about one hundred 

 and fifty square miles. Those that we have explored have 

 yielded between five and six hundred species of native flowering 

 plants, surely a very large number when we consider that the 

 solid rock is exposed everywhere and that soil in the sense 

 that we are accustomed to think of it does not occur there. 

 The close relationship of this flora to that of the West Indies is 

 now established by the fact that considerably more than one half 



