226 
BOTANICAL EXPLORATION IN WESTERN CUBA, 
To THE SCIENTIFIC DIRECTORS. 
Gentlemen: Pursuant to previous authorization to continue the 
botanical exploration of the West Indies, I have recently vitlted 
uba again, being absent from the Garden for this purpose ftom 
August 20 to Spetember 27, this being my fifth trip to that isl&fd. 
I was accompanied by Mrs. Britton and by Dr. C. Stuart Gaget, 
formerly director of our laboratories, now director of the néw 
botanical garden in Brooklyn, which is being established by the 
Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, and to their aid muth 
of the success of the expedition is due. 
Professor F.S. Earle, formerly one of our curators, now agricul- 
tural expert of the Cuban-American Sugar Company, joined us 
n Havana on our arrival on August 24, and the first field work 
of the trip was done that afternoon at Cojimar, on the coast 
Fic. 28. The large cactus, Cephalocereus Bakeri, at Cojimar, near Havana. 
just east of Havana; we had studied the coastal thickets there 
in February, finding many plants of interest, and this second 
visit revealed others which were not in flower at that time. 
Some species which I hoped to find here could not be detected; 
an interesting phase of Cuban botany is the apparent extermina- 
