The Bahamas, Old and New 105 



Island, but these islands in the Bay of Honduras have a 

 mysterious Antillean tinge to their fauna. When the Uto- 

 wa7m stopped at Coxen's Hole at Ruatan I found there a 

 tree lizard (which I call Anolis allisoni for our gracious 

 host) which was closely alHed to a species of Anoles with 

 representatives on the Cayman Island, Cuba, Jamaica, 

 Haiti, and the Bahamas. This group of lizards is so sharply 

 set aside from the scores of others in the same genus that 

 it almost deserves a generic name. 



Allison put David Fairchild, James Greenway, and me 

 ashore on East Plana, where as usual we made a grand 

 haul of the land shells which abound everywhere in the 

 Bahamas, and where also we collected some fine specimens 

 of G. ingrahcnm. These were the only specimens which 

 have been taken since the types were secured long ago. 

 The remains in the caves may mean that these little rodents 

 were eaten by the early inhabitants of the islands. Recent 

 explorations have greatly increased the number of animals 

 known to have existed on all of the Greater Antilles, but 

 this evidence has mostly been derived from undisturbed 

 caves or from caves where dripping supercharged lime 

 water has formed a breccia that has protected the bones by 

 encapsulating them with lime. 



The northern Bahamas with their flat pine-clad plains 

 probably never had a very varied vegetation; I suspect 

 they have always been much less fertile than the southern 

 Bahamas which supported what we know was a spacious 

 and gracious plantation life. Planters could once afford to 

 send their own horses to faraway Jamaica to participate 

 in the big races there, but today the islands are completely 

 poverty-stricken. The answer is of course fire. After eman- 



