48 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



always feel sure of a welcome at these neighborly gatherings. In fact 

 he must needs be careful, if his collecting trip should take him across a 

 plantation at tea time, not to be captured by the proprietor. Within the 

 planter's home the visitor will find many of the comforts and some of 

 the luxuries of modern life. There are books, magazines and news- 

 papers that keep the planter in touch with the outside world. Often 

 there is a piano, brought ten or fifteen miles over the mountain trails 

 on the shoulders of negroes. Members of the family who play the 

 instrument may often show good evidence of a training gained in Eng- 

 land or on the Continent. 



Finally, it is a matter of no small concern that a permanent trop- 

 ical station for British and American workers, should be located in 

 an English-speaking country, with a stable government and reliable 

 sanitary control, and in one readily reached from the United States and 

 Europe. Jamaica has the advantage of not being subject to revolution- 

 ary upheavals. Its quarantine against the entrance of tropical disease 

 is strictly maintained, and there is a good postal service. There are 

 2,000 miles of good roads in the lowlands, and two of these already reach 

 within five or six miles of Cinchona. Similar roads are soon to replace 

 other of the well-kept bridle trails already built in the Hills. Thus by 

 railroads, roads and bridle paths all parts of Jamaica are accessible 

 from Cinchona. The island itself can be reached from the United 

 States in four or five days, from five Atlantic ports, while the voyage 

 from England takes but ten or twelve days. 



We are to have available then a laboratory, readily accessible, and 

 in a very favorable location, of which Professor D. H. Campbell, who 

 has studied tropical vegetation in many lands, writes : 



I can think of no place where the fern vegetation is so rich and where other 

 types of tropical vegetation are more accessible. 



We believe the opportunity here offered will be more and more fre- 

 quently embraced by botanists, and that this laboratory in the western 

 tropics will doubtless, as was suggested by Goebel, " be of the very 

 greatest importance to the science, and will give a strong impulse to the 

 study of botany in America." Jamaica will then be honored among 

 men of science for the maintenance of this laboratory, as Holland has 

 been for the support of the famous station at Buitenzorg. 



The Harpswell Laboratory, 

 August, 1914. 



