﻿NO. 2 SMITHSONIAN EXPLORATIONS, I924 43 



" lost " until, under the guidance of Dr. J. N. Rose, I " rediscovered " 

 it ; yet the plant flourishes at the roadside within a few hundred yards 

 ot the fine botanical garden in the suburbs of Saint George. For the 

 convenience of anyone who might be interested in doing some field- 

 work on these Islands, attention may be called to the ease with which 

 they can be reached. The boats of the Quebec Steamship Company 

 maintain a service from New York to Barbados, touching at the 

 islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix, St. Ivitts, Antigua, Guadeloupe, 

 Dominica, Martinique and St. Lucia, and remaining at each for a 

 period which depends on the quantity of cargo to be handled, but 

 which is usually from three to ten hours. As the islands are small 

 and the roads on most of them are good, there is usually time to 

 get a fair general idea of topography, forests and cultivation during 

 the vessel's call, particularly when it is remembered that points of 

 special interest can be seen again on the return voyage. From Bar- 

 bados the passage to St. Vincent and Grenada is made by the Royal 

 Mail boats plying between St. John, New Brunswick, and Demarara, 

 British Guiana, by way of Bermuda, the Lesser Antilles and Trinidad. 

 There is also a line directly from New York to Grenada and Trinidad, 

 but this gives no opportunity to see other islands. On the return 

 voyage inconvenience may be experienced in obtaining passage owing 

 to the number of " round trippers " with whom the boats are some- 

 times crowded ; and for the same cause travel between neighboring 

 islands is not always easy. 



The appended photographs show characteristic scenes. 



Gerrit S. Miller, Jr. 



EXPERIMENTS IN HEREDITY AT THE TORTUGAS 



In continuation of the heredity experiments in the Tortugas con- 

 ducted under the joint auspices of the Smithsonian and Carnegie 

 Institutions, Dr. Paul Bartsch visited Cuba from May zj to May 30 

 this year, in order to add a spirally striated Cerion element to the 

 Cerion colonies established at the Tortugas. Thanks to the good 

 offices of Dr. Carlos de la Torre, of the L^niversity of Havana, he was 

 able to secure a sufficient series of a strongly spirally striated new spe- 

 cies of Cerion belonging to the Cerion johnsoni group at Mariel. where 

 also a large number of Cerion sculptuni. likewise, though less strongly 

 spirally striated, were gathered. In addition to these, Cerion nmmmia 

 from Marianao and Cerion chrysalis from Cabanas Fort and Cerion 

 tridentata from Rincon de Guanabon were collected and planted at 

 the Tortugas. The last is peculiar on account of the internal lamel- 

 lation of the aperture, thus adding another element to our experiments. 



