11 
a "taste" of our Barbuda experience of the previous year. His 
hand and lower forearm became painfully swollen, inflamed, and 
blistered, nor did his face and neck escape. In hacking his way 
through the brush he must have come in contact with the sap of 
a shrub related to our old friend, the cashew nut (family 
Anacardiaceae , genus Gomocladia ) , not uncommon in the thickets 
and scrubby forests of some of the drier areas of the Caribbean 
and in Mexico, as in Barbuda. The juice of all species of the 
genus is extremely poisonous, and of some is so corrosive that 
in parts of the West Indies it is used to cure ringworm and to 
destroy warts, but such use can be dangerous. Several weeks 
elapsed before the attack subsided and Dr. Clarke could work in 
comfort and without endlessly renewed wrappings of paper towels 
and applications of calamine lotion, of which, fortunately, we 
had a good supply. (Calamine lotion should be included in every 
tropical American medicine chest.) 
The great mangrove swamp area in Ascension Bay is surely 
several square miles in extent. In an account (Estuarine 
Bulletin, Univ. Delaware, vol. 5, No. 2, June 1960) dealing with 
mangroves and this swamp in particular, Dr. Daiber remarked that 
"the trees spread out into depths of water where young seedlings 
could no longer become rooted to the bottom... so the mangrove 
front was being advanced by the elongation of prop-roots rather 
than by new seedlings. There was considerable organic fill 
among the prop-roots, to such an extent that only at high tide 
was it covered. Waterways up to forty and fifty feet deep wound 
and twisted among the trees. The accumulated organic matter 
imparted a tea color to the water. 
