March 5, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



235 



standards of accuracy could be established for 

 the guidance of surveyors and map-makers. 

 In fact, such an organization as the American 

 Society of Oiwl Engineers, which is vitally in- 

 terested in surveys and maps, has no commit- 

 tee to consider these important matters. 



It is hoped that the engineers and scientists 

 of the country will cooperate with the Board 

 of Surveys and Msjps by making their wants 

 known. If they will do this the board will be 

 able to make the maps of the governiment of 

 even more use to the public than they have 

 been in the past. 



William Bowie 



U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, 

 Washington, D. C. 



THE CINCHONA TROPICAL BOTAN- 

 ICAL STATION AGAIN AVAILABLE 



The lease of the Cinchona Station by the 

 Smithsonian Institution on behalf of a group 

 of contributing American botanists was inter- 

 rupted by conditions existing during the war. 

 It has now been resum.ed and the laboratory 

 will be available for American botanists dur- 

 ing the coming year. 



This trapieal laboratory in a botanical gar- 

 den containing scores of exotic trees, shrubs 

 and vines and other scores of herbaceous per- 

 ennials from all quarters of the earth is located 

 within a half-hour's walk of an undisturbed 

 montane rain forest, on the southern slope of 

 the rugged Blue Mountains of Jamaica. In 

 the well-kept garden of ten acres and on other 

 parts of the Cinchona plantation of six thou- 

 sand acres, the visiting botanist can find well- 

 developed specimens of many economic or 

 ornamental plants such as cinchona, tea, coffee, 

 rubber trees, isilk oaks, ironwoods, several spe- 

 cies of eucalyptus and many others. The dry 

 ridges and sunny valleys of the south side of 

 the Blue Mountains offer many types of pe- 

 culiar ferns, of epiphytic bromeliads, grasses, 

 mistletoes and lianes. In the rain forest are 

 to be found scores of species of ferns ranging 

 from, the very diminutive epiphytic polypo- 

 diums of but an inch or two in height to the 

 scrambling pteridiums or gleichenias or climb- 

 ing lomarias of many yards in length, and to 



great tree ferns, forty feet in height. Mosses 

 and liverworts are present here in like pro- 

 fusion and grow on all sorts of substrata from 

 the damp soil of the forest floor, the trunk of 

 a tree fern, or even to the leathery surface of 

 the leaf of a climbing fig or fern. There are 

 also dozens of interesting native trees, shrubs 

 and vines and many herbaceous forms which 

 together make parts of the forest a practically 

 impenetrable jungle. 



As the vegetation of the main ridge of the 

 Blue Mountains differs from that of the south- 

 ern ridges and valleys, so that of the beclouded 

 northern slope, especially the hot, moist lower 

 slopes differs from both. In the deep valley of 

 the Mabess River, five miles north of Cin- 

 chona, many peculiar mosses, ferns and seed 

 plants, including a wealth of interesting epi- 

 phytic species are to be found. There are 

 whole square miles of these northern slopes of 

 the Blue Mountains within a day's walk of 

 Cinchona that have never been explored by the 

 botanist, nor even by the collector. 



Botanists wishing' to work on plants of the 

 lowlands or the sea coast can make their head- 

 quarters in Kingston. Such workers have al- 

 ways been granted the privilege of using the 

 library, herbarium and laboratory at Hope 

 Gardens. These gardens also contain a fine 

 collection of native and introduced tropical 

 plants offering much material for morpholog- 

 ical and histological study. Cacti, agaves and 

 other xerophytic plants of the sea coast and 

 the algse of the coral reefs along the shore af- 

 ford still other types of vegetation of great 

 ecological, developmental and cytological in- 

 terest. Castleton Garden, the third botanical 

 garden of the island, has a very different cli- 

 mate from either Cinchona or Hope, for it is 

 located in a hot, steaming vaUey, twenty miles 

 north of Kingston, where cycads, screw pines, 

 pahns, orchids, figs, ebonies and the gorgeous 

 amherstias and other tropical trees grow lux- 

 uriantly. 



All in all Jamaica probably offers the bot- 

 anist as great a variety of tropical conditions 

 within a day's walk of Cinchona and a day's 

 drive from Kingston as can be found anywhere 

 in an area of equal size. One of our botanists 



