500 
APPENDIX. 
the buds containing the leaves not having yet opened. 
Now as the Ceiba does not bear flowers and seed but in 
alternate years, though there is an annual hybernation, 
biennially it produces only foliage. In alternate years it 
blossoms, but never throws out a single leaf till those 
blossoms have expanded into seed-pods as big as walnuts. 
In one case it produces leaves in January, in the other it 
does not assume that livery till April. If I can conve- 
niently walk out with my sketch-book, for I cannot ride 
on horseback, and I am scarce able to bear the jolt of a 
chaise, I will make a sketch of some tree that has got out 
of the equilibrium of leaves, — and flowers and fruit, — in 
alternate years, and exhibits the biennial succession in one 
half only of its branches, so that the east side will be all 
foliage up to April, and the west bare stems and twigs 
with only terminal seed-pods to the same month, and vice 
versa next year. The Bursera gummifera, though deci- 
duous, does not, so far as I have observed, bear in alternate 
years. In St. David’s, where I was when I last addressed 
you, that tropic Birch is the commonest of the trees, 
among the scrubby forests that line the mountains towards 
the sea, and they were all leafless alike. I narrate these 
facts exclusively from my own observation. MacFadyen 
does not notice them.” — {Letter from Mr. Hill, dated 
Lawrencejield, St. Catherines, Jamaica, 21 th March, 
1851.) 
III. 
Vegetation on the Pedro Kays, p. 310. (See also ‘‘ The 
Birds of Jamaica,” p. 435.) — “ I must not omit to let you 
know that the low shrub, the only vegetation on the Pedro 
Pocks, if we except the single Cocoa-nut tree, — the me- 
morial of a dead seaman, — is the Suriana maritima, a 
plant which Humboldt says the South American Spaniards 
