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plain. We struck the plain somewhere north of Chirigota, where 
we came to the Havana-Pinar del Rio macadamized road, which 
we followed westward through Santa Cruz de los Pinos to Los 
Palacios. We crossed the Taco Taco River about noon and 
lunched under the shade of the iron bridge. Here the river has 
a soft limestone bed and some collecting was done northward 
along its rocky course to where it becomes a deep body of quiet 
water in which large numbers of big fish and turtles were seen. 
This trip of five days in the saddle covered a considerable 
stretch of country, and although many short stops were made to 
collect, only 150 numbers were secured, which does not indicate 
that the region was poor in botanical material, for it is quite the 
contrary, especially the well-watered fertile limestone hills south 
of Bahia Honda which were crossed in considérable haste and 
partly in the dark. However, it gave me a knowledge of the 
country that may be of service for future work. 
The siliceous formation with its attendant pine-trees extends 
entirely across the island, southward in the form of a sandy plain 
and northward in a series of shaly hills, cutting the limestone 
range of mountains, which extends from Sierra de Anafe, near 
of usually perpendicular sharp-pointed peaks of a hard black lime- 
stone, comparatively dry and barren of much vegetat Th 
eastern hills are less abrupt, compossed of a lighter eae softer 
and more stratified lime rock usually well watered and covered by 
a rather dense forest growth, and apparently devoid of the two 
most striking arborescent features of the western hills, the 
slender “palma de sierra”? and the grotesque “drago.”’ The 
extensive serpentine limonite formation with its large pine 
forest, known as Loma Cajalbarra, is entirely distinct from the 
rest of the afore mentioned formations, and as it had been visited 
by Wright in December, 1863, it may possibly harbor some of 
his rare pine land plants that we have as yet failed to find. At 
any rate it must harbor many species not occurring elsewhere 
in western Cuba. Pan de Guajaibon, supposedly the highest 
point in the western part of the island, has a somewhat different 
