978 NOTES ON THE BOTANY OF JAMAICA. 
informs me that he has seen cotton-trees on which one branch was 
bare and another in full leaf. I have heard from others that there are 
irees, more particularly fig-trees, which shed their leaves twice a year. 
In looking over a landscape we generally see here and there a naked 
tree, here and there one in fresh foliage, and the rest a mass of a rich 
dark-green hue. With most of them two or three weeks suffice for a 
complete renovation. 
The trees most common in the parks and pastures are uw 
anfractuosum, two Terminalie, Hura crepitans, Hippomane Mancinella, 
Calophyllum Calaba, several Fig-trees and Laurinee, Bumelia salicifolia, 
Cordia platyphylla, Anona muricata, various Citri, Erythrina velutina, 
Piscidia Erythrina, Bambusa, Daphne tinifolia, Byrsonema coriacea, 
Areca oleracea, Cocoa-nut and other palms, probably introduced. 
This mixture of various types, that is seen in all tropical countries, 
contrasts strongly with the few genera, such as Oaks, Pines, and 
Hickories, that make up so large a proportion of our timber in the 
north. What most surprised me upon coming hither, directly from 
the United States, was to find so extremely few representatives at all 
of the Flora of that vast continent, and these chiefly in the shape of 
such genera as occur equally in South America, or such marsh-plants 
and ferns as are found all over the world. Jamaica would seem to 
be nothing else than an outlying portion of South America, and to 
have nothing to do with the northern continent, deriving its vegetation 
from a period in the world's history either anterior or posterior to its 
existence. This character of it is very strongly exhibited in the pro- 
fusion and variety of Melastomacee, Myrtacee, and Cinchonacee, and 
the total absence of Cupulifere and Abietinee, and is not much affected 
. by the occurrence of a few mostly single species of Rubus, Vaccinium, 
Viburnum, Clethra, Asclepias, Euphorbia, and Ambrosia, because they 
are either introduced weeds, or belong equally to the southern con- 
tinent. Garrya certainly has hitherto been only found in Jamaica 
~ and California; but it has been but very lately discovered here, and 
. will probably be found in the mountains of South America, when. they 
. have been explored. I met with it near the Portland Gap of the 
. Blue Mountain, at about 5,500 feet, I should suppose, above the sea. 
"The general appearance of this part of the island is not so very 
. strikingly exotic. But for the cotton-trees and palms, there is nothing 
. very different from the aspect of extra-tropical countries. Indeed, the 
