TROPICAL STATION AT CINCHONA, JAMAICA. 427 



THE TEOPICAL STATION AT CIKCHONA, JAMAICA. 



By Dr. N. L. BRITTON, 

 director-in-chief of the new york botanical garden. 



A GKEAT need in the formation of the collections of tropical and 

 -^--^ subtropical plants of the New York Botanical Garden and else- 

 where in the United States has been a suitable place in the American 

 tropics where seeds could be germinated and cuttings and seedlings 

 grown under natural conditions for periods up to two or three years, be- 

 fore their transportation. Plants can be germinated and grown under 

 glass, but in many instances it is desirable or even necessary that they 

 should be cultivated in the open, and the care of such nurseries is far 

 less expensive than that of propagating houses. Larger plants col- 

 lected in the tropical forests are also transported to the temperate zone 

 only with difficulty and with considerable loss unless they have been 

 again rooted in the tropics and sent north in pots or tubs, sections of 

 bamboo stems being readily available for this purpose. I came to 

 realize this condition on my trip to the West Indies in the autumn of 

 1901, in company with Mr. Cowell, director of the Buffalo Botanic 

 Garden, and we discussed the project for the establishment of a nursery 

 a great deal, and concluded that in order to make as complete an exhi- 

 bition of tender plants as possible in our northern conservatories such 

 an adjunct to our work was necessary. 



During Professor Underwood's recent extended visit to the island 

 of Jamaica, while pursuing his investigation of the ferns of tropical 

 America, he learned that the building and grounds of the colonial 

 government at Cinchona were offered for rental and he at once com- 

 municated this fact to me. It has long been the desire of all Amer- 

 ican botanists that arrangements should in some way be made for a 

 laboratory in the American tropics, to which investigators could con- 

 veniently go for the purpose of carrying on studies of tropical and 

 subtropical plants growing under natural conditions, instead of under 

 the necessarily artificial conditions which glass houses afford in the 

 temperate zone. This matter was taken vip as long ago as 1897, when 

 the island of Jamaica was visited by Dr. D. T. MacDougal and Pro- 

 fessor D. H. Campbell, who, at the request of other American botanists, 

 made an examination of available sites for such a laboratory, and de- 

 cided that this very place. Cinchona, was the one probably best adapted 

 to the purpose in view. At that time, however, the Department of 

 Public Gardens and Plantations of Jamaica was using these buildings 

 and grounds as a part of their agricultural and horticultural system 



