Birds, 6875 



beach, enter the sea in a very oblique direction, or if the current be 

 not very strong the surf places a dry bar completely across it. It is 

 on a narrow strip, scarcely more than a bar, of this * gravel,' that the 

 little town of Annotlo Bay is built, in front of a large lagoon and 

 morass. The road from thence to Buff Bay runs for a considerable 

 distance along it, where it is only just wide anough for the purpose. 

 But another source of supply to these swamps, besides the interrupted 

 surface drainage, is the great number of springs, of very considerable 

 volume, which here find egress. In paddling down a canal cut 

 through the morass at Dover I found them welling out between the 

 roots of the flags that fringed the low bank at every few yards. This 

 is doubtless the drainage from the marly hills, which rises to the sur- 

 face at the point it meets with the impervious conglomerate. One 

 remarkable feature of this beach of shingle or ' gravel ' is that it ren- 

 ders the coast quite untenable to the mangrove. Along the whole 

 coast line, from the mouth of the Wag Water to St. George's, no 

 clump of this tree is to be met with ; and this is the more remarkable 

 as it has firmly established itself in a large lagoon called Alligator 

 Pond, but does not seem able to extend beyond it. I thus have not 

 fallen in with a single specimen of the pretty little warbler I alluded 

 to in former letters as Sylvicola eoa. The place of the mangrove is 

 supplied by a thin line of Coccoloba uvifera, much weather-beaten; 

 and under its shelter flourish many maritime plants and shrubs — 

 a Chrysobalanus with leaves and fruit much larger than the species 

 common in Westmoreland, and Ecastophyllum Brownei, whose papi- 

 lionaceous flowers, of a delicate white, would scarcely have been 

 looked for in such a situation. Viewed from the coast the country 

 has a cultivated look very unusual in Jamaica. The gently swelling 

 hills from Blowing Point, and those all along the base of the higher 

 mountains, seem occupied by extensive pastures, and patches of the 

 same soft green appear, in the most inaccessible places amid dark 

 woods, towards the summits of the mountain peaks. But the hills 

 near Blowing Point are now only the site of numerous ' thrown-up ' 

 estates, the cultivated appearance being caused by the almost exclu- 

 sive possession taken of the soil by a * Guinea- grass.' The difference 

 between this and the true Guinea-grass of the western parishes is 

 well known to the pen-keepers of St. Ann's, who generally stub it up 

 as a noxious weed, under the name of ' St. Mary's Guinea-grass.' 

 Whether the distinction between the two has been botanically recog- 

 nised I do not know, but in appearance it is considerable, principally 

 with regard to size. It is here eight feet high or more, and so 



