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other species from the surrounding hills, all of which latter species 
are rare compared with the Bocconia. 
This steeply sloping valley bottom of hundreds of acres of 
new soil of broken rock ought to prove as interesting, from many 
aspects, as the island of Krakatoa as an area in which to study 
the occupation of a virgin soil by a new plant covering. Seeds 
of many species, and in considerable numbers, must be scattered 
over this valley yearly from the plants of the neighboring moun- 
tain sides, and species after species may be expected to establish 
itself beside the John Crow Bush, as larger and more numerous 
areas become fitted, by the gradual accumulation of soil and by 
the growth of other plants, to support the more exacting species. 
A second region of unusual botanical interest that was greatly 
changed by the floods is the cloud-filled valley of the Mabess 
River, which tumbles downward north of Morce’s Gap with a 
fall of about a thousand feet to the mile. This valley, at a 
point about two miles north of Morce’s Gap, has, because of its 
lower altitude, a warmer and moister climate than Cinchon 
It is filled with clouds for probably two thirds of the ceeey 
hours during the year. Recent visitors to the Mabess Valley 
where about Cinchona.* Shreve and others found the forest 
floor to the edge of the stream and the boulders in the middle 
of the stream carpeted with an herbaceous vegetation of mosses, 
ferns, orchids, Peperomias, and Pileas, and draped over the 
rocks and trees were Acrostichums, Lygodiums, Columneas and 
many other lianes. This was the condition of things in 1906. In 
June, 1910, the boulders in the middle of the stream and along its 
edges, which Shreve found covered with thick humus and sup- 
porting a luxuriant vegetation, were bare to a height of eight 
or ten feet above the stream. The whole stream bed up to this 
height, and therefore often for a distance of fifty feet back from 
the normal edge of the stream, is ground clean of all vegetation 
and of all relics of the former vegetation. There is left only a 
mass of polished boulders and broken pebbles. Only where 
*See Shreve, F. A collecting trip at Cinchona. Torreya 6: 81. 1906. 
