65 



condition are shown in our Figure I which is from a photograph of 

 the famous and noble tree growing in the rear of the Public Build- 

 ings of Nassau, on the island of New Providence, Bahamas. Ceiba 

 pentandra is a rapidly growing tree, but this individual, in the 

 opinion of Mr. L. J. K. Brace of Nassau, is "fully 1 50 years or 

 more old." In the public library at Nassau is a sketch representing 

 "A View of a Silk Cotton Tree in the Island of New Providence, 

 Bahamas, May 12, 1802" this, by tradition and from general 

 resemblance, is supposed to show the patriarch silk-cotton tree of 

 the island — the one of which the photograph is here published — 

 as it appeared in 1802. The tree at that time, according to the 

 sketch, had young buttresses of a considerable size and in the 

 judgment of Mr. Brace it must have been then at least 50 years 

 old. The tolerably uniform and comparatively slight thickness of 

 the buttresses make it easy to cut out parts of them for use as 

 planks or boards, and in west Africa, according to Cook and Col- 

 lins (/. c.) " pieces of these supporting wings are sawed out and 

 used as doors of native houses." 



In the Bahama Islands and in Porto Rico, where the writer has 

 seen the Ceiba growing, the tree has a rather short and stout main 

 trunk of about 12 to 25 feet in height up to the first branches, 

 whence the main axis persists in diminished volume, but usually 

 erect and easily recognizable, to the top of the tree. The main 

 trunk, especially if one includes the basal buttresses, often has an 

 enormous girth. According to Cook and Collins (I.e.) " a specimen 

 near Ponce measured 36 meters at 4 feet from the ground, by fol- 

 lowing the sinuosities of the trunk." The main branches are very 

 long, widely spreading and nearly horizontal, so that the horizontal 

 diameter of the crown is sometimes more than twice as great as 

 the total height of the tree. This feature is excellently illustrated 

 in the Porto Rican tree of which a photograph is published by 

 Cook and Collins [lc. pi. 24) and less well by our figures 2 and 6. 

 The great spreading branches of the tree shown in our figure 3 — 

 a photograph of a tree standing on the bank of a river on the 

 borders of the city of Ponce, Porto Rico — were put to good service 

 at the time of the destructive Porto Rican hurricane and flood in 

 August, 1899, when, it is said, many people saved themselves 

 from drowning by taking refuge among the branches of this great 

 tree. In Cuba and Jamaica, however, according to various reports, 

 the Ceiba ("seiba" or " saba") sometimes takes on another form, 

 the massive trunk running up to a height of from thirty to eighty 

 feet* without a branch and then deliquescing into a compatively 

 small crown. Our figure 4 illustrates such a tree growing at Man- 

 deville, Jamaica. Mr. _\Torman Taylor, recently returned from a col- 

 lecting expedition to the Sierra Maestra, near Santiago, Cuba, 

 informs the writer that this form or one with a less flattened crown, 

 is the prevailing one in the forests of that region. Professor Carl F. 

 Baker, botanist of the Estacion Agronomica Centi'al of Cuba, also 



* Lunan, Hortus Jamaiceasis I., 245. 1^14. Macfadyeu, Flora >>f Jamaica, 

 92. 1837. Havard, Phut World 4: 222. 1901. 



