GRASSES OF THE WEST INDIES. 



By A. S. Hitchcock and Agnes Chase. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The term West Indies as here used includes Bermuda, the Ba- 

 hamas, Trinidad, and Tobago, but excludes the Dutch Islands off 

 the coast of Venezuela. Trinidad and Tobago belong floristically 

 to South America but are here included with the West Indies because 

 they were so included by Grisebach in his Flora of the British West 

 Indian Islands. 



The flora of the West Indies has been studied from an early date. 

 It is fortunate for the student of this flora that many of the tropical 

 American species described in early works were based upon speci- 

 mens collected in these islands. The literature of the West Indian 

 flora is reviewed by Urban, 1 who gives also biographical sketches 

 of botanical collectors who have traveled in the West Indies. The 

 most important works are the following: 



Sloane, Hans. A voyage to the islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christo- 

 pher, and Jamaica * * *. Vol. 1, 1707. Vol. 2, 1725. The chief importance 

 of this work is due to the fact that the plates are often cited by Linnaeus and 

 others in connection with the descriptions of plants and help to determine the 

 types of the species described. The plants described by Sloane are in the Sloane 

 Herbarium at the British Museum of Natural History. 2 



Browne, Patrick. The civil and natural history of Jamaica. 1756. Binomi- 

 als are not used in this work. Browne sent a small collection of Jamaican 

 plants to Linnaeus. These are in the Linnaean Herbarium and may be recog- 

 nized by the letters " Br." upon the sheets. These plants were described by 

 Linnaeus in the tenth edition of the Systema Naturae (1759) and by Elmgren, 

 a pupil of Linnaeus, in a pamphlet entitled Plantarum Jamaicensium Pugillus 

 (1759). The latter was included by Linnaeus in the Amoenitates Academicae, 

 volume 5 (1760). 



Swartz, Olof. Nova genera et species plantarum seu prodromus descrip- 

 tionum vegetabilium. 1788. Swartz's plants are preserved in the Natural 



x Symb. Antill. 1. 1898. 



2 See Hitchcock, The grasses of Sloane's history of Jamaica. Contr. U. S. 

 Nat. Herb. 12: 131. 1908. 



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