90 

 RECENT EXPLORATIONS IN JAMAICA. 



Report to the Board of Scientific Directors of the New York 

 Botanical Garden, by Dr. N. L. BRITTON, Director-in-Chief.* 



By permission of Mr. D. O. Mills, President of the Board of 

 Managers of the Garden, I devoted the period between August 25 

 and October I to botanical exploration in the island of Jamaica, 

 taking advantage of the kind invitation of the Hon. William 

 Fawcett, Director of the Public Gardens and Plantations to visit 

 the island. I was accompanied by Mrs. Britton, by Professor L. 

 M. Underwood, Chairman of the Scientific Directors of the Garden 

 and by Miss Delia W. Marble. Professor Alexander W. Evans, 

 of Yale University and his assistant, Mr. Nichols, were with us a 

 part of the time. 



Although much is known of the flora of Jamaica, considerable 

 areas of the island have been only imperfectly explored, and some 

 of the regions accessible only with"difficulty and by the expendi- 

 ture of much time, have not yet been visited by botanists. One 

 object of the expedition was to determine upon the most practica- 

 ble plans for reaching these unexplored regions, the most note- 

 worthy of which are the so-called Cockpit Country, in the west 

 central part of the island, and the John Crow mountains at the 

 extreme eastern end. 



We spent a week in the eastern edge of the Cockpit Country, 

 centering at Troy and at Balaclava, under the guidance of Mr. 

 William Harris, Superintendent of Public Gardens and Plantations 

 of Jamaica, who had previously made several trips to this region 

 and penetrated farther into it than any other botanist had been 

 able to do. During these trips he has made extensive botanical 

 collections, including many species of trees and shrubs new to 

 science ; his work of collecting has been carried on for several 

 years in cooperation with the garden, and we have received from 

 his department a complete series of all the plants secured ; he led 

 me to many of the novelties found by him, and we secured addi- 

 tional specimens of them ; we also detected a number of other new 

 species, including some of great interest. The region is a very 

 rough one physiographically, consisting of a very porous lime- 

 stone eroded into characteristic hills and deep hollows, the ragged 

 edges of the rocks making passage through it, except on the few 

 roads and trails, exceedingly and necessarily slow to avoid dan- 

 gerous tumbles ; it has a general elevation of some 2,000 feet 

 above the sea, its highest hills said to reach 2,700 feet, and its 

 climate is delightful ; naturally, it is very sparsely populated ; we 

 concluded that its complete exploration could only be accomplished 

 by means of a pack-train and camp outfit, using existing trails 

 and penetrating laterally from them as far as possible on foot ; 

 there is no doubt that this method would bring out many addi- 

 tional novelties, as the distribution of plants there is very local, 

 and I hope it may be accomplished before some of them are lost 



* Journal of The New York Botanical Garden. Vol. VII., No. 83 pp. 245-250. 



