GRASSES OF THE WEST INDIES. 
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By A. S. HircHcock and AGNES CHASE, 
INTRODUCTION. . 
The term West Indies as here used includes Bermuda, the Ba- 
hamas, Trinidad, and Tobago, but excludes the Dutch Islands off 
the coast of Venezuela. Trinidad and Tobago belong floristically 
to South America but are here included with the West Indies because 
they were so included by Grisebach in his Flora of the British West 
Indian Islands. 
The flora of the West Indies has been studied from an early date. 
It is fortunate for the student of this flora that many of the tropical 
American species described in early works were based upon speci- 
mens collected in these islands. The literature of the West Indian 
flora is reviewed by Urban,! who gives also biographical sketches 
of botanical collectors who have traveled in the West Indies. The 
most important works are the following: 
Sloane, Hans. A voyage to the islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, 8S. Christo- 
pher, and Jamaica * * *. Vol. 1, 1707. Vol. 2, 1725. The chief importance 
of this work is due to the fact that the plates are often cited by Linnzus and 
others in connection with the descriptions of plants and help to determine the 
types of the species described. The plants described by Sloane are in the Sloane 
Herbarium at the British Museum of Natural History.’ 
Browne, Patrick. The civil and natural history of Jamaica. 1756. Binomi- 
als are not used in this work. Browne sent a small collection of Jamaican 
plants to Linnus. These are in the Linnean Herbarium and may be recog- 
nized by the letters “ Br.” upon the sheets. These plants were described by 
Linneus in the tenth edition of the Systema Naturae (1759) and by Elmgren, 
a pupil of Linnus, in a pamphlet entitled Plantarum Jamaicensium Pugillus 
(1759). The latter was included by Linnzeus in the Amoenitates Academicae, 
volume 5 (1760). . 
Swartz, Olof. Nova genera et species plantarum seu prodromus descrip- 
tionum vegetabilium. 1788. Swartz’s plants are preserved in the Natural 
48ymb. Antill. 1. 1898. 
2See Hitchcock, The grasses of Sloane’s history of Jamaica. Contr. U. S. 
Nat. Herb. 12: 181. 1908. 
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