92 Naturalist at Large 



Cuba has been cleared for cultivation probably as ex- 

 tensively as New England was a hundred years agp and 

 little of the land has yet begun to go back into second 

 growth, as a large part of New England has already done. 

 Cuban soil is unbelievably fertile and there are many fields 

 on which cane has been cut for a hundred years without 

 replanting. Indeed, I know a valley west of Havana where 

 the topsoil is sixty feet deep, and while I miss now the 

 high forests which I used to see on my visits to Cuba thirty 

 or more years ago, I still enjoy the plantations of mango and 

 other fruit trees which are found far and wide about vil- 

 lages and sugar mills. 



The mango is one of the finest shade trees of the whole 



world, and the tender roseate hue of the long drooping 



leaves on the new-grown shoots is singularly lovely. It is 



strange how many tropical trees have this habit of putting 



forth quick-growing shoots with long, limp, slender leaves, 



pink or even bright red in color, which finally harden up 



and become the firm, typical adult foliage of dark green. 



I think of the Browneas, with their great red pompons of 



flowers, delicate Httle trees and hard to grow, and of that 



most glorious of all the flowering trees of the entire world, 



Amherstia, which we cannot make grow in Cuba. We only 



flowered it once in Soledad. Perhaps you may have seen 



it at Castleton Gardens in Jamaica or in Trinidad, or best 



of all in its native home in Burma. The flowers are borne 



each like a tiny bird mounted on a wire and each wire 



attached, as it were, to a long strand which hangs down 



from the end of the limb, each little bird crimson, with 



boldly painted golden spots. 



Unfortunately Amherstia, even in Burma, seldom, if 



