156 Distribution of the North American Flora. [ March, 
Turning to the hotter parts of North America, the same pro- 
cess of invasion by natives of the Old World is going on: a 
British-Indian plant! has established itself in the streets of Savan- 
nah, and so entirely simulated the habit of a native weed, that 
American botanists gave it a new name, regarding it as indigenous; 
and one of the most curious cases of plant invasion known to me 
is that of the mango tree in Jamaica, which reminds one of the 
accounts of captured tribes, which, after being carried into their 
conqueror’s country, have so increased and multiplied, as event- 
ually to dispossess and supplant their captors. In 1782, Admiral 
Rodney took a French ship, bound for St. Domingo from Bour- 
bon, with living plants of the cinnamon, jack-fruit and mango, 
sent to the botanical gardens of the former island by that of the 
latter. These undistinguished prizes the Admiral presented to 
the Jamaica Botanical Gardens. 
There the cinnamon was carefully fostered, but proved to be 
(as it is to this day) difficult of culture in the island; whilst the 
mango, which was neglected, became in eleven years as common 
as the orange, spreading over lowlands and mountains from the 
sea-level to five thousand feet above it. On the abolition of 
slavery immense tracts of land, especially coffee estates, relapsed 
to a state of nature, and the mango being a favorite fruit with the 
blacks, its stones were flung about everywhere, giving rise to 
groves along the roadsides and settlements ; and the fruit of these 
again, rolling down hill, gave rise to forests in the valleys and on 
their slopes. The effect of this spread of the mango has been to. - 
cover hundreds of thousands of acres, and to ameliorate the 
climate of what were dry and barren districts, by producing 
moisture and shade, and by retaining the rainfalls that had pre- 
viously evaporated, besides affording food for several months of 
the year to both negroes and horses. It may well be, that by 
future generations in Jamaica, Admiral Rodney will be known 
less for his victory over Count Grasse, and being the first to 
“break the enemy’s line”’ than as the capturer of the mango tree 
in the Spanish Main. 
And it is the same in all countries colonized by the Anglo- 
Saxon ; so firmly have the plants he has brought with him estab- 
lished their foot, or rather, roothold in the soil, that were he and 2 
all other evidence of his occupation to disappear from North _ 
1 Fragaria indica Andr. (Potentilla durandii Torr. and Gr.). 
