170 NATURAL SCIENCE [September 



but it is also used almost indiscriminately for any unusual fish. 

 ' Sea-squirt ' is used for both ascidians and holothurians. When a 

 native speaks of an ' owl ' or a ' potoo,' it is not always possible to 

 determine whether he means the barn owl, or the large goatsucker, 

 Nyctibius, as the names are constantly interchanged. ' Bain-bird ' 

 may be a swift or one of three different kinds of cuckoo, while 

 ' doctor-bird ' and ' banana-bird ' are also terms whose value depends 

 on the speaker. 



That the fauna of Jamaica is undergoing comparatively rapid 

 changes must be clear to even a casual observer. The manatee and 

 the agouti, as well as the iguana, are apparently on the road to 

 extinction, and it is almost certain that the famous ' Blue Mountain 

 duck ' (Aestrclata caribbaea) has been exterminated during the last 

 half of this century. The introduction of toads and the mongoose 

 have clearly affected the land fauna, though it looks as if the native 

 animals were adapting themselves to the new conditions. It is only 

 a little over twenty-five years since the mongoose was introduced, 

 and it is now common everywhere. Five or six years ago the 

 snakes seemed to have been practically exterminated by their new 

 enemy, but now they are beginning to appear again, so that one or 

 two species are no longer varieties near Kingston, and we saw 

 several near Port Antonio. Whether the snakes have developed 

 some new form of defence or escape, or whether the mongoose has 

 ceased to look for food in that group of reptiles, is still an open 

 question. It is not only among the land animals, however, that 

 such changes are <roin« on. Several instances of remarkable 

 changes in the abundance of a given species may be mentioned 

 among marine animals. There seems to be very good evidence 

 showing that the viviparous Synapta is becoming rarer each year, 

 and that the area it inhabits is becoming more and more restricted. 

 Cassiopca was far from common in 1896 where it was most 

 abundant in 1893, and we did not find large numbers of it in any 

 one place. The remarkable little cubomedusa, Tripedalia, which 

 was very abundant in the 'Slashes' in 1896 had completely dis- 

 appeared in 1897, and a week of careful searching failed to disclose 

 a single specimen anywhere in the Slashes or Lakes. It may not 

 be safe to draw any sweeping conclusions from a few isolated facts 

 of this sort, but they are at least worthy of note. 



One cannot close an account of zoological Jamaica without 

 some reference to the scientific work which is being done in the 

 island itself. As an authority on Jamaican shells, Henry Vendries, 

 Esq., of Kingston, has a world-wide reputation, and his collection of 

 native shells is very extensive. Mr P. W. Jarvis has been an 

 extensive collector of the crabs of Jamaica, and has furnished the 

 United States National Museum with the types of many new 



