HIGHLIGHTS OF BOTANICAL EXPLORATION IN THE NEW WORLD 22 7 



R. Proctor, who has collected intensively in Jamaica since 1950. The com- 

 pletion of the Flora of Jamaica is now under progress by Stearn. 



The field work of H. Stehle and his collaborators on the French islands 

 adjacent to and including Martinique and Guadeloupe has resulted in his 

 Flore de la Guadeloupe et dependances, Vol. 1, Essai d'ecologie et de 

 geographie botanique, 1935; Vol. 2, Catalogue des phanerogames et fou- 

 geres, the latter by H. and M. Stehle and L. Quentin, 1937-1949. Addi- 

 tional recent studies in the West Indies are as follows: A. Questel, The Flora 

 of the Island of St. Bartholomew (1941) ; the important work of W. H. and 

 B. T. Hodge on the Island of Dominica, which has resulted so far in the 

 collection of some 4000 numbers and the publication of Flora of Dominica 

 (parts, 1937, 1938, 1940); the work of John and Pamela Beard (1943- 

 1944) in the forests of the Lesser Antilles, Natural Vegetation of the Wind- 

 ward and Leeward Islands; and the work of R. N. Moscoso in compiling the 

 Catalogus Florae Domingensis (1942). 



For the past fifteen years Richard A. Howard, director at the Arnold 

 Arboretum, and E. S. Howard have conducted explorations in the Bahamas, 

 Jamaica, and the islands of the Greater and Lesser Antilles. Their continuing 

 extensive field investigations anticipate descriptive publication in the future. 



Many investigators have taken part both in early times and our own in the 

 exploration of coastal regions and the vast interior of tropical South America. 

 Even yet the complex and enormous flora of no part of the area can be con- 

 sidered sufficiently known to prepare a descriptive treatise which could 

 satisfy the standards of contemporary demand. 



No comprehensive summation of the tropical American floras has been 

 made, or indeed could have been made, since the prodigious accomplishment 

 of Martins' Flora Brasiliensis. Its writing occupied a period of sixty-six 

 years (1840-1906) in the preparation of fifteen folio volumes of one to six 

 parts each, contributed by the outstanding botanists of the period. Into it 

 went the records and study of the collections of the great explorers of the 

 time, stretching over nearly a century, resulting in the description of 2253 

 genera, 22,767 species (5689 new, 19,629 Brazilian, 3138 extra-Brazilian) 

 and 6246 illustrations. It is today useful for all the region of the hylean 

 rain forest of South America. 



Venezuela. The earliest botanical collector in Venezuela (for a history 

 of the botanical exploration of Venezuela see the introduction to Las plantas 

 usuales de Venezuela, 1926, by H. Pittier) was Peter Loefling, a student of 

 Linnaeus and a member of Solano's geographical explorations. Loefling in 

 the year 1754 collected in the vicinity of Cumana, Barcelona, and the lower 

 Caroni. Before 1800, short visits were made to Venezuela by Jacquin, Brede- 

 meyer, and Schiicht. 



On July 16, 1799, Alexander von Humboldt, the great geographer and 

 man of letters, arrived at Cumana, Venezuela, with his companion Aime 



