276 NOTES ON THE BOTANY OF JAMAICA. 
given of the process. I now learnt that the bark was first burnt, and 
the ashes then mixed with the clay. I saw a quantity of the ashes, 
and Donna Cesaria was kind enough to order some of them to be put 
into a small basket for me, which I now send you, just as I received 
it at her fair hands. The Caraipé-tree grows throughout the province 
of Para, and here in the sertao, where metals are scarce, coppers are 
lined with it, and large mandiocca-furnaces are made of it, where it 
has to sustain an immense degree of heat. I often see immense pots 
for cooking in, exactly resembling our largest kail-pots in the north 
of England and Scotland, and when blackened by smoke looking quite 
like iron, yet made of Caraipé ware. 
(To be continued.) 
Notes on the Botany of JAMAICA ; written during a tour from Moneague, 
in that Island, on the 6th of May, 1850; by Dn. R. C. ALEXANDER. 
In the following notes upon the Botany of Jamaica, it is not in- 
tended to give a continuous narrative of herborizations,—its Flora is 
too well known already,—but to make a few remarks on some of the 
more striking features of its vegetation. 
A stranger landing at Kingston, as I did, about the end of Novem- 
ber, taking a drive round the environs and a trip over to Spanish 
Town, and looking up at the craggy barrier of mountains lying to the 
north, might suppose it an island of little botanical interest. This 
lowland part of it is mostly covered with Cashew (Prosopis juliflora), 
Logwood (Hematozylon), and various Inge, Acacia, and other shrubby 
Leguminose. Here and there, as on the railroad route to Spanish Town, 
he will see a group of negro huts, situated in gardens of Plantain, Cocoa- 
.. mut, and Bread-fruit, realizing his ideas of tropical scenery, and as he 
| passes through the streets of Kingston, a most gorgeous array of 
_ flowers hanging over the garden palisades; but the general impression 
. will be rather uninviting. Let him, however, take the St. Ann’s road, 
and cross the mountain, and as soon as he is over the crest of the 
Mount Diablo, he will come upon as different a character of landscape 
as though he had travelled many degrees of latitude to the north ;—a 
succession of undulating pasture-fields, with handsome trees in them, 
