206 FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SUREY-I 3TH ANNUAL REPORT

West Indies. The trees are nearly all evergreen, and most of them have small fleshy fruits, adapted for distribution by birds. Species belonging to entirely different families often look much alike, and are difficult to distinguish even when in bloom, for the flowers are rather inconspicuous. Characteristic trees are the gumbo-limbo (Bztrsera), mastic (Sideroxylon), rubber or wild fig (Ficius), and pigeon plum (Coccolobis laurifolia). Shrubs and herbs make up a very small part of the total bulk of vegetation. Fire is very rare, as in other hammocks, and the ground is covered with a thin layer of humus. These hammocks are too limited in extent in central Florida, and the trees in them too small, to be of any economic importance.
 TALL TREES
 Palm savannas (figs. 4, 32). These are of two principal types, w'et and dry. The first is found principally around the head (f Indian River and Newfound Harbor on the east coast, and near the Gulf coast in Citrus and Hernando Counties, where there are thousands of acres of damp and presumably marly flats close to sealevel, on-which the cabbage palmetto' is almost the only tree, and there are very few shrubs. On Merritt's Island the herbaceous vegetation is mostly switch-grass (Spartina Bakeri), but elsewhere there is greater variety. These savannas are evidently subject to fire, but probably not so often as the pine forests.
 The second type occurs among the dunes of Long Key in Pinellas County, and probably elsewhere along that coast. The soil is sand with a considerable, admixture of shell fragments, and the topography is diversified with miniature hills and hollows produced by the wind. The trees are all cabbage palmetto, and there is a sparse. undergrowth of a few bushes.and vines and many herbs, largely of the same species found in calcareous flatwoods and in meadow-like dune hollows on Anastasia Island.* Some evidences of fire were noted on Long Key, but nothing. is known of its frequency. The herbage affords a little grazing.
 A transition between palm savannas and low hammocks is found near the head of the Indian River and elsewhere, especially around Homosassa, where there are dense shady forests composed almost entirely of cabbage palnetto.

 *See 6th Ann. Rep., pp. 304, 339, 398.