3 o SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



meration of the plants collected by Eggers has appeared, 

 but an uncritically compiled list is given (16) by Tippen- 

 hauer. This I have not seen, and only know of its 

 existence from a short review (17), where it is stated that 

 100 pages are devoted to botany, and the number of plants 

 enumerated reaches 3193, brought together from a variety 

 of sources. 



Two enumerations of the plants of the Bahamas have 

 appeared (18 and 19), neither of which can lay claim to 

 completeness ; but between them they are sufficient to give 

 a correct idea of the character and composition of the flora, 

 and probably include very nearly all the flowering plants of 

 the whole group of islands. The first, however, is a com- 

 pilation from several sources, and by several persons of 

 very unequal qualifications for the task. As the geo- 

 graphical part is perhaps the weakest, I may pass on to 

 the second, though I should add with regard to the first 

 that the names were largely contributed by Kew, based 

 on specimens collected by Mr. Brace, and may be taken 

 as approximately correct. Mr. Hitchcock's paper deals 

 more especially with the geographical questions, and it 

 is supplemented by a tabulated view of the distribution 

 of the plants collected in the Bahamas, within the islands 

 of New Providence, Eleuthera, Cat, Watling, Crooked, 

 Fortune and Inagua, and their extensions to Cuba, Central 

 America, South America, Virgin Islands and South Florida. 

 The islands of this archipelago are very numerous, but the 

 largest of those enumerated above, New Providence, is only 

 twenty-one miles by seven, and none of them rises more 

 than 300 feet above the sea-level; consequently there is even 

 less variety in the vegetation than in the Lesser Antilles. 

 Indeed the flora is almost wholly maritime in character ; 

 yet a few species have been collected in these islands that 

 have not hitherto been found elsewhere. It is also at 

 the same time essentially Cuban in character, as 321 out 

 of 380 species in Mr. Hitchcock's Bahama collection are 

 known to occur in Cuba. As many as 129 reach South 

 Florida, but these are all southern types, which have their 

 northern limit in Florida or the Southern United States. 



