distribution has probably come about chiefly through the subse- 

 quent slow but sure encroachments of cHmax vegetation, on all 



the better soils. 



College Point, L. I. 



A TRIP TO JAMAICA IN SUMMER 



By Elizabeth G. Britton 



Starting for Jamaica on the twenty-fourth of August, after 

 ten weeks of hot, dry weather in New York, does not seem to 

 be an ideal way of spending a vacation ; but the voyage there 

 and back on the fine large steamships of the Royal Mail and 

 three weeks in the open air collecting were a welcome and beneficial 

 experience. Wakened at dawn by the rockets signalling for a 

 pilot, it was a beautiful sight to see those glorious Blue Moun- 

 tains loom dark and mysterious with the comet faintly visible 

 above them, and to watch the change of colors on the water and 

 hills as each familiar land-mark came into view. Since our last 

 visit, the earthquake had laid Kingston in ruins ; the cocoanuts 

 at the end of the Port Royal peninsula stood in twenty feet of 

 water and the wrecked steamships of the Hamburg-American 

 line lay on the beach with their tragic history still unfinished. 

 But as we neared our dock, it was but a step " from the sublime 

 to the ridiculous," for there were those same negro boys diving 

 for pennies, exactly as if nothing had happened. Kingston never 

 was a picturesque city and it compared unfavorably with the capi- 

 tals of any of the larger West Indian Islands ; but it has now 

 the dignity of sorrow and the hope of renovation. Many of the 

 business streets are still a mass of tangled ruins, for the new shops 

 are being built on vacant lots away from the water front. We 

 found the trolleys and railroads running as usual and comfortable 

 accommodations at the Constant Spring Hotel. We spent the day 

 after our arrival at the Hope Botanical Gardens, where the blos- 

 soms of the Poinciana sprinkled the ground with red and the 

 humming-birds darted in and out of the arbors of TJuDibergia 

 grandiflora ; and we left by rail for Williamsfield early the follow- 

 ing morning, reaching there in time to drive to Mandeville and 



