40 THE BOTANY OF BERMUDA. 
Walsingham tract.” This remarkable region is a narrow ridge, about 
two miles long and from a quarter to half a mile wide, which separates 
Castle Harbor from Harrington Sound, at the east end of the islands, 
and does not altogether comprise above 200 acres, including Tucker’s 
Town. It contains nearly the whole of the indigenous vegetation of 
the group. A few characteristic species, such as Randia aculeata, 
Pavonia spinifex, Myginda Rhacoma, are only found at the other end, 
and a few are diffused here and there pretty generally. Such are - 
Hugenia axillaris, Forestiera porulosa, and Dodonea viscosa. But, on the 
whole, this small tract is the Mecca of the botanist in Bermuda, and his 
pilgrimages will be many before he exhausts it. For this we must, of 
course, seek a geological cause. This narrow ridge of land, honey- 
combed by caverns, fretted with the dissolving rains of ages, and rent 
by fissures, is, in the writer’s opinion, the last surviving contemporary 
of former Bermudas that have disappeared, whose surface-rocks form 
the reefs that fill Castle Harbor and both the sounds, and form the 
northern barriers against the fury of the Atlantic. The evidence in 
support of this opinion would be out of place in this section. It will be 
evident that if such be the case, we should expect to find here, as we 
do find it, the greatest accumulation of those species which, not being 
capable of self-origination anywhere, can only have reached this very 
isolated spot by the slow operation of natural causes long continued. 
The surface of the contemporary Bermuda is not of high geological 
antiquity, as follows necessarily from its AXolian origin and its contin- 
uous subsidence, but what it has of antiquity is to all appearance found 
here. 
The following is a list of 25 species exclusively or almost exclusively 
to be looked for in the Walsingham tract. They are nearly all West 
Indian; few of them American in the sense of belonging to regions of 
corresponding latitude on the continent. 
AISChyMOMENE, SP) 12-5 sceseelsces WT.) Jatropha Curcas:eees-s22sseeeee ee W. I. 
Ampelopsis quinquefolia......--.- A.” | Passitiora ciliatamesmas s-2 eee W. I. 
Asplenium crenulatum ..-....----- Peperomia obtusifolia...---..----. W.L. 
Asplenium myriophyllum -.....-.. Psilotum triquetrum-......-.----.. W. I. 
Callicarpa ferruginea .....-....-.- W.I. | Psychotria undata...-..-.....-.-. W. I. 
Chiococea racemosa. ..-..--...---- W. 1. | Pteris heterophylla. -.-.....--: ---. W. I. 
Modon war viSCOSa sssecee sa cccee Wi Tes Sabal Adansonil asec. 2s.) asses A. 
Eleodendron xylocarpum......-.. W. I. | Sicyos angulatus -......-...-...-. A. 
Kugenia axillaris.....-...-.-..... W. I. | Sponia Lamarckiana........-..-.. WwW. T 
Forestiera porulosa ....-..-.------ W. I. | Statice Limonium,var. Caroliniana- A. 
Guilandina Bonducella -...-...-.--- W. I. | Triumfetta semitriloba....-..-.--- W. I. 
Tpomees purpurea s/s srecs jee W. I. | Xanthoxylum Clava-Herculis -.... Neel: 
Jasminumieracile 22022 sys W. I. 
