500 APPENDIX. 



the buds containing the leaves not having yet opened. 

 Now as the Ceiba does not bear flowers and seed but in 

 alternate years, though there is an annual hybernation, 

 biennially it produces only foliage. In alternate years it 

 blossomSj but never throws out a single leaf till those 

 blossoms have expanded into seed-pods as big as walnuts. 

 In one case it produces leaves in January, in the other it 

 does not assume that livery till April. If I can conve- 

 niently walk out with my sketch-book, for I cannot ride 

 on horseback, and I am scarce able to bear the jolt of a 

 chaise, I will make a sketch of some tree that has got out 

 of the equilibi'ium of leaves, — and flowers and fruit, — in 

 alternate years, and exhibits the biennial succession in one 

 half only of its branches, so that the east side will be all 

 foliage up to April, and the west bare stems and twigs 

 with only terminal seed-pods to the same month, and vice 

 versa next year. The Bursera gummifera, though deci- 

 duous, does not, so far as I have observed, bear in alternate 

 years. In St. David's, where I was when I last addressed 

 you, that tropic Birch is the commonest of the trees, 

 among the scrubby forests that line the mountains towards 

 the sea, and they were all leafless alike. I narrate these 

 facts exclusively from my own observation. Mac Fadyen 

 does not notice them," — (Letter from Mr. Hill, dated 

 Laioreticejield, St. Catherine's, Jamaica, 21th March, 

 1851.) 



III. 



Vegetation on the Pedro Kays, p. 310. (See also " The 

 Birds of Jamaica," p. 435.) — " I must not omit to let you 

 know that the low shrub, the only vegetation on the Pedro 

 Rocks, if we except the single Cocoa-nut tree, — the me- 

 morial of a dead seaman, — is the Suriana maritima, a 

 plant which Humboldt says the South American Spaniards 



