BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 309 
never been studied in anything like a complete manner as 
regards the natural productions which characterise it. For 
instance, its Botany, the only portion upon which we are 
now called to speak, is the least known of any of these 
islands. Jamaica, St. Domingo, Martinique, and Guadaloupe, 
have been repeatedly explored by naturalists and travellers, 
who have brought their varied vegetable productions to 
Europe. The works of Sloane, Brown, and Swartz, have 
especially made known the plants of Jamaica: those of the 
other islands have been described in many monographs or 
general works, published in different parts of Europe; as, for 
instance, those of Plumier and Jacquin. 
* Cuba, on the contrary, has been visited by very few 
botanists; the stay of Jacquin in this island was very brief, 
and the limited number of plants which he gathered, are 
scattered up and down, in the many publications of this 
learned botanical traveller. The same may be said of MM. 
Humboldt and Bonpland, who merely touched at the Ha- 
vannah, and explored its immediate environs. The Florula, 
appended by M. Künth to the Nova Genera et Species, and 
which contains a list of 156 species, the greater part new, is 
even now the completest work that we possess on the vege- 
tation of this great island. M. Poeppig, who has so success- 
fully explored many of the districts in the republic of Chili, 
has brought many species from Cuba, many of them already 
described in the periodical German works, especially the 
Linnea. Such are all the materials that we had hitherto 
possessed towards elucidating the vegetation of Cuba. 
“ The following pages are intended to make this vegetation 
better known. They are compiled chiefly from the materials 
collected by M. Ramon de la Sagra, during a residence of 
nine years in this island, and which are the produce either of 
that savants own excursions into the different parts, or of 
collections received from various resident botanists, with 
whom his situation brought him into contact. These mate- 
rials, which are pretty numerous, are amply sufficient to give 
a general notion of the plants of Cuba; not that it is to be 
