128 IN LOWER FLORIDA WILDS 



home on the "islands" and along the borders of 

 the Glades preying upon its smaller mammals; 

 deer are still found occasionally; raccoons and 

 otters are fairly abundant. 



The waters are well stocked with fish of several 

 species. Black bass is common, but the most 

 notable of fish is a gar pike belonging to the genus 

 Lepisosteus which differs in many essential points 

 from all other groups of the present day. There 

 are supposedly three species of this genus in the 

 waters of the United States, one of which also 

 extends its range into Cuba. A fourth species is 

 Central American and a fifth Chinese. These 

 ganoids (as the order of the gar pikes is called) 

 date their origin in the Lower Silurian period — 

 many many million years ago. Together with 

 the sharks which also inhabited these primordial 

 seas and still exist in our waters, these were the 

 first known fishes of our planet. The ganoids 

 swarmed in the ancient oceans of pregeological 

 epochs, but few species remain to-day. The 

 Everglade pike is one. 



The entire ganoid structure is "old-fashioned" 

 to a remarkable degree. In the earher forms 

 the skeleton was cartilaginous but in the recent 



