JOHNSTON: FLORA OF MARGARITA ISLAND. 295 
III order then to make an intelligent and thorough comparison of 
the flora of Margarita and Coche with that of other regions about the 
Caribbean Sea, it would be necessary for one to have access to speci- 
mens of plants and lists of plants collected in all lands bordering the 
Caribbean and also to have traveled in those regions. So far as the 
lists of plants and the collections are concerned it must be said that 
despite the many visits of American botanists to the West Indies and 
tropical .\merica, and despite their intense activity in the United 
States, there is yet very much to be known about the plants in those 
regions. Parts of Mexico and of Central America are being well 
worked over. Colombia and Venezuela have had so little work done 
on them that comparison of lists of their plants is almost valueless. 
The West Indies as a whole have the useful works of Grisebach and 
of Professor Urban but these contain no lists of plants of the individual 
islands, so that they are scarcely to be used in comj^arative work. 
A few of the American botanists frequent Mexico and parts of Central 
America, a very few have visited Colombia, still fewer Venezuela, and 
some frequent Cuba, Hayti, Porto Rico, and Jamaica. Seldom is the 
traveling extensive or in more than one region. Both plant and ani- 
mal surveys of the United States are fairly thorough through many 
parts, but in tropical America and the west Indies, biologically closely 
related to our southern States, little such systematic work has been 
done. 
In view of the situation as above discussed it is perhaps particularly 
desirable that I make such a complete comparison of the flora of 
Margarita and of Coche as may be possible with that of other regions, 
especially considering that I have what I believe to be a complete 
list of all plants ever collected in or recorded from Venezuela and 
also that I have been enabled to visit personally many parts of Vene- 
zuela, British Guiana, and Panama, and many of the West Indian 
islands. 
In a preceding chapter on the composition of the flora of Margarita, 
it would seem that the vegetation of Margarita partook equally of the 
nature of the W^est Indian and of the South American elements. 
This appearance I believe to be due to the large proportion of cosmo- 
politan plants present. In reality Margarita is, as would be expected, 
distinctly South American in its flora as will appear in the following 
pages. 
The two islands under discussion, ^Margarita and Coche, are the 
