230 Part IH. Chapter 3. 
size from an acre to many hundred acres and are scattered as islands in the 
everglades and pine-forests instead of surrounded by the ocean, as they form- 
erly were before the sea bottom between them became dry land by elevation. 
The trees, shrubs and woody vines harbor an almost incredible growth of 
plants of various categories. The growth of epiphytes is especially striking, 
for in numerous cases the tree trunks and branches are completely clothed 
with air plants, and so prolific are the orchids and bromeliads that many in- 
dividuals are forced to growth on the ground and on the neighboring pine 
trees”). Here occur the great majority of flowering plants now known to be 
common both to the West Indies and the mainland of North America. It is 
in the hammock where one finds the mastic Sideroxylon mastichodendron, crab- 
wood Gymmnanthes lucida, satin-leaf Chrysophyllum oliviforme (= C. monopy- 
renum), gumbo-limbo Bursera gummifera (= B. simaruba), prince-wood Zxo- 
stema caribaeum, white wood Drypetes crocea (= D. lateriflora), and manchineel 
Hippomane mancinella®). As the rock of New Providence Island of the Bahama 
group is essentially identic with that of Florida south of Miami, and as there 
are many trees and shrubs common to the two regions, as well, as to Cuba, 
while many species are endemic to each of the three regions, we are forced 
to conclude from the evidence that the flora gives, that geologically and to a 
certain extent floristically the hammock lands formed originally part of the 
Antillean region. The hammock lands represent perhaps part of the ancient 
system of keys which existed at the time when the Gulf Stream left the Ame- 
rican Mediterranean through a channel which existed across the northern half 
of Florida. It was when these islands formed an extended archipelago coext- 
ensive with the Bahamas that the hammocks were occupied by their present 
flora which, therefore, shows the closest relationship to that of the near by 
Bahama islands. With the elevation of the land through the epeirogenic moV- 
ements of the earth’s crust, through the agency of coral polyps, vegetation, 
ocean and wind currents, the Gulf Stream was directed into its present channel 
and the sea islands which now exist in south Florida in the form of hammocks, 
were connected by dry land, or by partially submerged banks to form the 
present peninsula of Florida, and after sufficient elevation had taken place, the 
surrounding sea flat was transformed into a savanna or into the vast spring 
known as the everglades. 
With the appearance of level plains by the removal of the shallow sea 
over a sandy bottom, isolated trees and herbaceous plants, which associated 
together formed the savanna formation, appeared and clothed the ground. 
Imperceptibly, these savannas were transformed into the pine-land formation. 
This formation is characterized by a scattering growth of Pinus heterophylla 
1) Consult the articles by Smarı, J. K. and Brrrron, N. L. in Journal New York Botanical 
Garden III, No. 26, Feb. 1902; IV, No. 39, March 1903; V, No. 51, March 1904; v, No. 55 
July 1904; V, No, 56, Aug. 1904 to which the writer is indebted for many facts herein set forth 
under the new cloak of generalization. 
2) GirrorD, John: Southern Florida. Forestr and Irrigation X: 406. Sept. 1904- 
