272 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



SOME OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING THE BOTANICAL 

 CONDITIONS ON THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS. 



By Alb an Stewart. 



Introduction. 



When I began the study and identification of the vascular 

 plants of the Galapagos Islands at the Gray Herbarium, some 

 seven years ago, I intended to include all of the results in a 

 single publication. After I had completed that part of the work 

 included in my paper entitled : A Botanical Survey of the Gala- 

 pagos Islands* it was found that such a mass of manuscript 

 had accumulated that it would probably be better to pub- 

 lish this part, and to reserve the general consideration of the 

 floras of the individual islands for a separate publication. 



An attempt has been made in this paper to describe briefly, 

 and in a general way, the botanical conditions as I saw them up- 

 on each of the islands visited. No attempt has been made, how- 

 ever, to describe the floras of the different islands in a detailed 

 way, because, such a consideration would consume too much 

 space, and furthermore, as our stay in some of the localities 

 visited was very brief, there was not sufficient time available to 

 make a sufficiently detailed study of the flora for this purpose. 

 This is especially true in some of the larger islands, where we 

 were obliged to get as far into the interior as possible in a short 

 time, hurriedly collect material, with brief notes, and then start 

 back to the shore. Expeditions into the interiors of most of the 

 larger islands are extremely difficult to make. Not only is the 

 country very rough in most places, and covered with heavy vege- 



• Proc. Cal. Acad. Scl., fourth series, vol. I, pp. 7-288. 1911. 



