The board, as constituted, is to consist of 7 members, 3 ex officio and 4 to be appointed by the President, and not more than 4 members of the board may belong to the same political party. The board, therefore, will be nonpartisan. Our export trade at present is without the usual and necessary means of support essential to its normal existence. In order to bridge over a difficult period, therefore, the committee has incorporated in the bill a section in which the corporation is given the authority to undertake the acceptance of long bills up to a period of 12 months maturity. This business, if wisely and prudently undertaken, may render a very material aid to our exporters and may result in assisting the reestablishment of a flow of farm products and manufactured goods of various classes to foreign countries. It is a business, which, if carefully carried on, need not result in loss or even require a great amount of active capital. Every witness interrogated by the committee was of the opinion that the enactment of this measure would be of the utmost assistance to the country and to business in general. Therefore we urge upon the Congress the necessity of making all possible speed with such relief as may be rendered by the enactment of the proposed measure. O Mr. NYE, from the Committee on Public Lands and Surveys, submitted the following REPORT [To accompany S. 475] The Committee on Public Lands and Surveys, to whom was referred the bill (S. 475) to provide for the establishment of the Everglades National Park in the State of Florida, and for other purposes, having fully and carefully considered the same, report favorably thereon with the recommendation that the bill do pass with the following amendment: On page 1, line 7, after the word "recommended" strike out the words "as a national park." This amendment was suggested by the Secretary of the Interior in his letter of December 28, 1931, which appears later in this report. Your committee saw proper the delegation of a subcommittee to visit the proposed park area, which was done in late December and early January of last year. This subcommittee had the opportunity to see many parts of the proposed park, observing it from the air, by automobile, and by boat, and reported back to the whole committee its enthusiastic support. The bill was then reported to and passed by the Senate. The enactment of this proposed legislation into law will, among other things, preserve a bird life all but extinct. Upon the subcommittee's visit there were witnessed wonderful exhibits of egrets, snowy egrets, Wards herons, Louisiana herons, little herons, wood ibises, white ibises, water turkeys, green herons, black-crowned and yellowcrowned night herons, bald-eagle osprey, red-shouldered hawks, turkey vultures, black vultures, dusky duck, blue-winged teal, meadowlark, doves, mocking-birds, and many other birds. Along the coast were found thousands of Florida cormorants, also numbers of brown pelicans, Herring's gulls, and laughing gulls. The great man-of-war birds, with expansive wings of nearly 8 feet, is seen about Cape Sable nearly all seasons of the year. On the flats along Cape Sable and elsewhere tens of thousands of shore birds, such as yellowlegs, sandpipers, dowitchers, willets, and snipes are found in autumn, winter, and spring. There still are found in small numbers manatees and crocodiles. Despite the enormous killing of alligators, many are left in the hammocks and swamps. There are wildcats, racoons, bears, panthers, whitetailed deer, and wild turkeys. A letter from Mr. Daniel Fairchild, depicting features of the proposed park, is inserted as follows: Senator GERALD P. NYE, Chairman Public Lands Committee, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. THE KAMPONG, DEAR SENATOR: It was a great pleasure to have had the opportunity of conducting your committee into the southern Everglades. I am quite confident that never before in the history of the world has so distinguished a group of men, with such power of advice and council, taken the trouble to personally investigate the claims and appeals for protection of a great natural area of wild life. I am personally of the opinion that without actually seeing such a region you could not have formed any adequate idea of its character or possessed the necessary facts upon which to base your opinion of its worthiness as a great sanctuary of tropical life-the only one within the borders of the national boundaries. I regret that some of the committee could not spare the time to see what the others did of the remarkable Shark River country, for that area represents what might be called the last stand of a type of wilderness which we who know south Florida from the early nineties have watched fade before our eyes. With its fading has gone forever the opportunity for our children to enjoy and be inspired by those matchless combinations of wild living forms which have in the past made of the American youth the keen, observing, resourceful personalties that they are to-day. You asked me to give you some facts about the kinds of plants which you were shown during the quick trip of the committee and I am doing so briefly, for should I go into detail with regard to the various species I would write a volume. As soon as one crosses from the region of frequent frost occurrence into that of its very rare occurrence, the number of species of plants jumps from hundreds to thousands and one familiar with the northern woods is lost in a multitude of new species which he has never seen. The tip of south Florida is unique in this respect: It represents one of the northernmost extensions of the tropical rain forest. There are only a few areas on the globe that correspond to this tip of Florida in climate, and none so far as I have been able to discover that combine the low flooded areas of newly made land with such a rain forest type of vegetation. Northern Mexico, southern Brazil (Rio Grande do Sul), the eastern slope of the Cordilleras of the Argentine (Oran, Tucuman), Natal East Africa, and northern Queensland and New South Wales, seem to be the other regions with rain forest vegetation that differs from the typical tropical rain forest only in the diminished number of species and somewhat less vigorous growth of creepers, palms, and evergreen foliage trees. None of these areas mentioned have the calcareous soils and level prairies flooded with fresh water in the rainy season which give to this southern tip of Florida its unique character and which have warranted its receiving the name of the "Everglades." There are nowhere else in the world "Everglades" in the sense that the word is used in America. This is a special area, known to geographers and botanists the whole world over, and its preservation will be understood as something most desirable to do by every educated man or woman throughout the world who cares for wild life. The great stretches of saw grass (Cladium effusum) form a gigantic marsh, which is without doubt the largest in the world. In this marsh grow 40 or more species of flowering plants, some of which are of great beauty. The giant white flowered Crinums and the Hymenocallis, called spider lily, are examples. Scattered over this immense marsh of saw grass are the hammocks, which when the glades are covered with water look like islands set in a sea of grass-filled waterland. These hammocks have been built up very slowly. They are many centuries old and they represent the accumulation of vegetable mold from certain trees and bushes which can stand the excessive lime conditions of the glade soils. After a time the soils in these hammocks become much less calcareous than the surrounding land and in consequence able to support trees which would perish on the strongly lime-impregnated soils of the regions around them. These hammocks are what make the Everglades so beautiful, as seen in the early morning or late afternoon. They have created a type of landscape to be met with nowhere else in the world. The trees and shrubs which compose these hammocks vary greatly. Each hammock seems to have its own variety and sometimes one finds in one hammock a tree or shrub unknown in any of the others. A list of these plants would require hundreds of names to enumerate. There are, furthermore, different kinds of hammocks-the tropical hammocks, Cape Sable hammocks, and key hammocks, each kind with its particular species of trees. As we sailed over in the blimp we looked down upon the so-called wild fig (Ficus aurea) which when alone and away from other trees makes a large tree but which if in contact with any other tree wraps its aerial roots about it and strangles it to death. This so-called strangler fig is one of the most spectacular of all tropical trees and as fine examples can be found in this south Florida area as anywhere else in the world. The live oak (Quercus virginiana), while not so large of growth in the hammocks as in northern Florida, is an important part of the hammock vegetation. The gumbo limbo (Bursera simaruba), with its glistening red bark and beautiful glossy leaves; the pigeon plum (Cocolobis laurifolia), the fruits of which were eaten by the Indians; the red bay (Persea borbonia), a relative of the avocado or alligator pear tree; the Jamaica dogwood (Ichthyomethia piscipula); and the soap berry tree (Sapindus saponaria); together with the cabbage palmetto (Sabal palmetto); the poison-wood tree (Metopium toxiferum), the leaves of which are as poison to the touch as poison ivy; the cocoa plum (Chrysobalanus pellocarpus), which bears edible fruits; the buttonwood (Conocarpus erecta); and the pond apple (Annona glabra); are a few of the many trees which we saw from the air. These were in the many small hammocks scattered below us. We sailed over stretches of the southern cypress (Taxodium_imbricarium) which forms large so-called ponds or "heads" in south Florida. We sailed over The effect the so-called big cypress in Collier County and we drove through it. of the small stunted trees which border one of these cypress ponds is that of a rapidly spreading forest but as a matter of fact the small trees are about as old as the large ones in the interior of the pond. Stretches of the Caribbean pine (Pinus caribaea) were below us at times where the land was dry enough for this characteristic tropical pine to grow. Fires sweep through these pine lands and do comparatively little injury to them but when the true hammocks get dry because of the drainage operations they burn up and are destroyed completely. As the blimp neared the headwaters of the Shark River, the deep green vegetation of the tropical mangrove came into view. The mangrove swamp is one of the most remarkable and characteristic types of vegetation to be found in the Tropics. A mangrove swamp teems with aquatic and amphibian life. In it grow the red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle), with their unique and striking stiltlike roots, which seem to be walking out into the water and have given the impression that they were building land rapidly, whereas they can not grow where the water is beyond a certain depth and consequently must be very slow soil builders indeed. The mass of roots, of course, enables débris of all kinds to accumulate, and in this way they do aid in the making of new land. The seeds of the mangrove germinate on the tree and form floating plummetlike fruits which drop into the sea and are washed ashore and in a most spectacular way start a new growth of mangrove. The black mangrove (Avicennia nitida), unlike the red mangrove, sends up from its roots thousands of aerial breathing organs that look like the tips of roots but which serve to supply the tree with air when its roots are covered with salt water. Attempts were made years ago to utilize the tannin in these mangrove trees; and these abortive efforts are still evident on the Shark River, where the trees were felled and destroyed. The effort was a failure, but there is no way to insure other abortive efforts being made which might easily result in the destruction of the beauty of the Shark River forever, so long as its banks remain in private hands. Aside from the red, white, and black mangrove and the buttonwood trees that make up the major part of the larger forest vegetation of the mangrove swamps, the remarkable seagrape (Cocolobis uvifera), with wonderful foliage that turns, SR-72-1-VOL 1——5 |