X ORCHIDS OF JAMAICA 



equatorial South America which are not found in the Lesser 

 Antilles and may also be associated with the extensions of land 

 already referred to. A south-eastern line of association with 

 equatorial South America through Hispaniola and Porto Rico is 

 without doubt represented by the series of the Lesser Antilles 

 and Trinidad ; as we have mentioned above thirty-eight Jamaican 

 species occur in the Lesser Antilles and forty in Trinidad. 



These facts of distribution are in accord with geological 

 evidence of a former linking up of Central America and Venezuela 

 by means of the line of the West Indies. 



" The Antilles are formed by the summits of a mountain chain 

 which separates the Caribbean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean and 

 the Gulf of Mexico. A second arc running from Honduras 

 through Jamaica and the south-west of Haiti appears to join the^ 

 principal chain. Even the great deeps which occur in certain 

 places, as, for instance, between Virgin Gorda and Anguilla, do 

 not interrupt the continuous course of the mountain chain." 



" With the slopes of the Mexican plateau in the State of 

 Oaxaca, says Seebach, the compact northern continent terminates. 

 To the south and to the east of the isthmus of Tehuan tepee. 

 Central America commences, which already belongs to the 

 island world of the Antilles. ' The mountain series of the 

 Greater Antilles, which further to the east in Porto Rico and 

 San Domingo — the eastern part of Haiti — forms a single main 

 chain, divides in the middle of the latter island, giving rise to a 

 southern branch which proceeds through the elongated peninsula 

 of Jacmel towards Jamaica and Honduras, and a northern branch 

 which extends beyond Cuba towards Yucatan . . .Is it merely 

 a remarkable accident that the Sierra Maestra, consisting of 

 crystalline schists and massive rocks and situated in the south- 

 east of Cuba (where the Greater Antilles reach their greatest 

 elevation of 2,338 meters above the sea), should run through 

 the Cayman group, the bank of Misteriosa, the Viciosas, and 

 Swan Island to the depths of the gulf of Honduras, and that 

 from the edge of this mountain ridges similarly constituted 

 should rise abruptly and proceed with constant strike into the 

 interior.' "— (Suess, " The Face of the Earth," Engl. Transl. i. 543.) 



Our knowledge of the flora of Jamaica starts with the work 

 of Sir Hans Sloane, who collected in the Island during a stay 



