Nathaniel Lord Britton
Published: 2015-08-05
Total Pages: 34
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Excerpt from The Vegetation of Mona Island: A Paper Read by Invitation at the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Celebration of the Missouri Botanical Garden, October 15, 1914 During the progress of the scientific survey of Porto Rico, organized by the New York Academy of Sciences with the aid of the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Botanical Garden and Columbia University, in cooperation with the Porto Rican Insular Government, exploration has been carried out not alone on the mainland of Porto Rico but on several small islands adjacent and politically a part of that colony. Two of these islands lie in the Mona Passage between Porto Rico and Santo Domingo, and being scientifically almost unknown, were made points of examination in February, 1914, when I visited them in company with Mr. John F. Cowell, Director of the Buffalo Botanic Garden, Dr. Frank E. Lutz, Assistant Curator of Invertebrate Zoology in the American Museum of Natural History, and Mr. W. E. Hess, Plant Propagator of the Porto Rico Agricultural Experiment Station at Mayaguez. The trip was made in a sloop chartered at Mayaguez. Desecheo Island, lying about eighteen miles northwest of Mayaguez, was first visited, and explored during two days; this island is somewhat more than one square mile in area, bordered by rocky coasts, rising abruptly into several hills, and covered with low trees and shrubs. Its flora is essentially identical with that of the drier parts of Porto Rico and of Santo Domingo; the small tree Morisonia americana and the snowy cactus (Mamillaria nivosa) have, however, not yet been found on the Porto Rican mainland, although both occur on the Island of Culebra east of Porto Rico, and neither of them is known on Santo Domingo. The cactus Opuntia haitiensis, plentiful there, is otherwise known only in Hispaniola, and the shrub Torrubia discolor of Hispaniola and Cuba has not been found on Porto Rico. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.