2. 
‘ 
of Tropical America (see JOURNAL, 4: 109), he learned that the 
buildings and grounds of the Colonial Government at Cinchona 
were offered for rental and he at once communicated this fact to 
me. It has long been the desire of all American botanists that 
arrangements should in some way be made for a laboratory in the 
American tropics, to which investigators could conveniently go 
for the purpose of carrying on studies of tropical and subtropical 
plants growing under natural conditions, instead of under the 
the necessarily artificial conditions which glass houses afford in 
the temperate zone. This matter was taken up as long ago as 
1897, when i island of Jamaica was visited by our Dr. Mac- 
Dougal and by Professor Douglas Houghton Campbell, who, at 
the request of other American botanists, made an examination off 
available sites for such a laboratory, and decided that this very 
place, Cinchona, was the one probably best adapted to the pur- 
pose in view. At that time, however, the Department of Public 
Gardens and Plantations of Jamaica was using these buildings and 
grounds as a part of their agricultural and horticultural system of 
gardens and experimental plantations, and this, together with 
other reasons, caused the postponement of the movement. 
During the autumn of 1902 Mr. William Fawcett, the Direc- 
tor of the Public Gardens and Plantations of the island, was in 
New York, together with Sir Daniel Morris, the Imperial Com- 
missioner of Agriculture for the British West Indies, oe at that 
time the matter was discussed again with them, and this gave an 
emphasis to the reconsideration of earlfer plans, both for nursery 
and laboratory. The decision of the Colonial Government to 
rent Cinchona, and transfer most of the work there carried on to 
other plantations, was reached only last summer, and as it was 
feared in Jamaica that the property might be diverted from its 
most desirable purposes, I concluded, after consultation with a 
number of persons interested, to assume the rental of the prop- 
erty, with the idea of carrying out both plans if possible, Dr. 
MacDougal immediately went to Jamaica, after Professor Un- 
derwood’s return, and made the necessary arrangements for the 
lease and for the caretaking of the property. I communicated 
this action by mail to over sixty of the botanists and horticultur- 
