306 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [NOVEMBER 
lower down, but they also filled in whole valley bottoms with the 
rock and gravel washed down from above. The amount of water 
and of débris carried with it was sufficient to wash away or bury 
out of sight most of a large and substantially constructed stone and 
concrete “‘coffee works” near the Cascade River. 
The effect of the flood and landslides on the topography and 
vegetation of the valley of the Cascade River, a normally small 
mountain stream, located about three miles east of the Cinchona 
Botanical Station, was briefly described in a note published in 
tg10.2, At that time, which was but six months after the flood, 
the floor of this valley was still a barren waste, covered with 
pebbles and broken rock fragments of all sizes, ranging from that 
of a pea up to bowlders a meter in diameter. The only plants 
evident at this time were a few widely scattered seedlings of Bocconia 
frutescens and still fewer seedlings of half a dozen other dicotyledons, 
such as grow on the hills beside the valley. The largest of these 
plants were only 2 or 3dm. high. - In other words, the valley 
bottom, which in 1903 and 1906 I had seen covered with a forest 
consisting of large trees together with dozens of types of shrubs and 
herbs, was in 1910 an all but absolute desert. The forest had been 
completely .washed away or buried, and there was left a truly 
virgin soil, with no trace of humus, which bore but the barest 
sprinkling of young seedlings. 
After studying the conditions in this and other valleys in 1910, 
and taking into account the abundant rainfall and frostless climate 
of the region, it was concluded that the floor of the Cascade Valley 
would probably be recovered with a dense vegetation, although 
perhaps not with a fully developed forest, in a score or two of years. 
It was realized, of course, that many of the forest plants, being 
dependent on an abundant humus, would not find satisfactory 
conditions there for many years, because of the slowness with which 
this type of soil is developed. 
On a trip to Jamaica, in July 1919, I again visited the Cascade 
Valley, and expected to find that, during the nine years that had 
elapsed, the few plants that were starting on the newly deposited 
gravel in 1910 had multiplied greatly, and that many new species 
2 Jour. New York Bot. Gard. 11:273. 1910. 
