THE BOTANICAL GARDENS OF JAMAICA. 



By William R. Maxon. 



[With 20 plates.] 



To many Americans who have enjoyed their first acquaintance with 

 the Tropics through a voyage to Jamaica, that island, picturesque 

 in its unfamiliar and exceedingly luxuriant vegetation, has itself 

 seemed like a huge botanical garden. The feeling is especially strong 

 if the visitor has been fortunate enough to journey out of the beaten 

 path of the tourist, back among the heavily forested Blue Moun- 

 tains, which almost everywhere are visible from the lowlands in 

 the eastern half of the island. There he will have found fulfilled 

 every inviting promise of coolness, damp dense shade, and sheer 

 tropical luxuriance of the "school geography" kind: the forests 

 filled to overflowing with a bewildering profusion of ferns and 

 clambering vines; the larger trees studded with orchids and bright 

 bromeliads, or so smothered in hanging mosses and liverworts that 

 their very individuality of trunk and branch is lost ; and the damp 

 forest borders no less completely green, the precipitous banks — for 

 all Jamaica is rocky — covered with a dense mosaic of herbaceous 

 flowering plants and of ferns in almost infinite variety and abun- 

 dance. 



The multitude of ferns alone will convey the impression of a 

 botanical garden upon a stupendous scale. Of these there are not 

 far short of 500 species in the island, 50 of which are tree ferns 

 (Cyatheaceae), several commonly attaining a height of 40 feet or 

 more. Tree ferns are commonest in the higher mountains, although 

 one of the most abundant and beautiful of all (Cyathea ar~borea) is 

 found mainly at low elevations, for example at Bog Walk and in 

 the gullies near Port Antonio, where it has been seen and admired 

 by thousands of American tourists. 



But whether in the mountains or in the lowlands, and quite aside 

 from the unusual character of the vegetation, there are various other 

 features — the smooth, white limestone roads, the brilliant sunshine, 

 the songs of strange birds, the volubility and general good nature of 

 the blacks, and, above all, the delightfully equable climate — which 



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