A. Gray — Botanical Necrology of 1885. 15- 



area, the Cape being wonderfully crowded with kinds of plants. 

 The voyage was thence to Sydney and through the Coral Sea 

 to Hongkong, which was reached about the middle of March, 

 1854. The collection of over 500 species of pheenogamous 

 plants which was made during that spring and summer, upon 

 this little island, and supplemented in the spring of 1855, was 

 in part the basis of Bentham's Flora Honkongensis. In the 

 autumn of 1854, interesting collections were made on the Bonin 

 and Loo Choo Islands, and later upon the islands between the 

 latter and Japan. Still more extensive and important were 

 the botanical collections made in Japan, especially those of the 

 northern island, although the stay was brief. Also those made 

 in Bering Straits, mainly on Kiene or Arakamtchetchene Island r 

 on the verge of the polar sea, where the scientific members of 

 the expedition passed the month of August and a part of Sep- 

 tember, 1855. Beaching San Francisco in October, the season 

 being unpropitious for botany, Mr. Wright was detached from 

 the expedition, and came home by way of San Juan del Sur 

 and Nicaragua, botanizing for a few weeks upon an island in 

 the Lake, and thence by way of Greytown to New York. 



In the following autumn (of 1856) Mr. Wright began his 

 prolific exploration of the botany of Cuba. Landing at San- 

 tiago de Cuba, on the south-eastern part of the island, he 

 passed the winter of 1856-7 and the greater part of the ensu- 

 ing summer in that nearly virgin district, most hospitably 

 entertained by his countryman Mr. George Bradford, and 

 among the caffetals of the mountains by M. Lescaille, returning 

 home with his rich collections early in the autumn. A year 

 later he revisited Cuba, was again received by his devoted 

 friends, extended his botanical explorations to the northern 

 coast, and also farther westward, exchanging the dense virgin 

 forest for open pine woods, like those of the Atlantic Southern 

 States, stopping at various hatos or cattle-farms on his route, 

 but reaching better accommodations at Bayamo, when his 

 kind host, Dr. Don Manuel Yero, assisted him in making some 

 profitable mountain excursions. In the winter and spring of 

 1861 he was again domiciled with the Lescailles at Monte Verde 

 and at the other coffee-plantations of this kind family ; and from 

 thence he was able to extend his herborizations to the eastern 

 coast from Baracoa to Cape Maysi. The next winter he made 

 his way westward to near the center of the island, making 

 headquarters at the sugar plantation of the hospitable Don 

 Simon de Cardenas, thence visiting the Cienaga de Zapata, a 

 great marshy tract toward the south coast. In early summer 

 he transferred his indefatigable operations to the Vuell-abajo, as 

 it is called, or that part of Cuba westward of Habana, making 

 his home at Balestena, a cattle-farm at the southern base of the 



