1899] OPEN LETTERS 321 
Three small two-roomed cottages and a small eating house on the hill 
above the gardens are kept by a native hotel keeper. These furnish the only 
accommodations possible for a visiting botanist in this quite out-of-the-way, 
secluded spot. A description of the Jamaica gardens has already been pub- 
lished in the GAZETTE by their able director, Mr. Fawcett. The American 
student would find it difficult to study at Castleton, as there is no laboratory, 
and carriage hire to and from Kingston would prove rather expensive. All 
laboratory material would necessarily be transported from Kingston to this 
‘solated spot, as well as in large part the canned goods upon which he would 
find it necessary to live. 
The well-equipped laboratory of the Hope gardens is one half hour from 
he town of Kingston. The visitor would be obliged to live in the city of 
Kingston, and go back and forth on the electric car every day. The labora- 
tory is not equipped for all kinds of botanical work, but is an airy, well kept 
place, which would form a very pleasant laboratory for a herbarium student, 
and could easily be fitted up with appliances for microtome or physiological 
work, The hotel at Kingston at which the visitor would be obliged to put up 
“quite impossible from an American standpoint, and would go a long way 
‘oward giving him several sorts of tropical complaints should he stay long. 
Port Antonio, on the north coast of the island, possesses no garden, and 
the Johns Hopkins laboratory, in which Dr. Humphrey contracted the fever 
from which he died, consisted of several converted rooms in Captain Baker's 
excellent American hotel, huilt upon the substantial profits of the banana 
aa Antonio is a small town, very picturesquely built on By a 
shag - little of interest in the way of native life and sen : 
a n comparison with Kingston. The roads lead directly th ; Pe 
Stud tt plantations or banana fields into the mountains, whence materia 
+ Sa be easily obtained. : fit tedtien 
books, teat the Jamaica Institute, with its gone peg eee of 
agricultural — of West Indian natural history, and the ates 
chemistry, under the able management of Messrs. Du sf 
ondall, and Wat to a visitor, 
enabli : ; 
ig him to orient himself quickly in the problems of tropical 
han any of the other British West Indian islands. 
iety, with Mr, Doust in charge, would prove of # 
Student interested in agriculture. 
Q my forty si ed inidad are the largest and best cared 
he to visit in the West Indies. They are situate 
re or “savanna” in the center of the residence po 
of Spain. The laboratory is small, but equipped with eens 
ensils of a working botanist, and a small library of botanica 
aterial 
for of any it has 
d beautifully 
rtion 0 
bee 
