Nassau and its neighbourhood are really not unlike an open-air museum of botanical and marine curiosities. As you drive, or walk, through the woods and lanes, your attention is constantly attracted to some tree or shrub remarkable for its curious shape, leaves, and flowers. If you ask its name you will be told it is either the gum-arabic-tree, the guava, the banyan, the ipicac, the pimento, the spice, the cinnamon, the pepper, the caper, the castor-oil, or, in short, any one of half the plants which stock our drug or grocery shops. One day I noticed an onion-like-looking plant, with somewhat curious leaves, and asked its name. It turned out to be my old acquaintance "squills," of syrup-fame. Lady Blake, who is not only a distinguished artist, but an exceptionally learned botanist, has executed a complete series of exquisite drawings of the flora of the Bahamas. It would be difficult to overpraise the artistic, as well as the scientific value of this collection, exhibited in the Bahama Court of the Colonial Exhibition of 1886. During the Governorship of her husband, Sir Henry Blake, Lady Blake rendered a like service to the flora of Jamaica. The cocoa-nut tree is a recent introduction into the Bahamas. Forty years back there were few in the whole island of New Providence. The orange-tree is indigenous to the island, and there is other fruit of exceedingly fine quality. A very extraordinary fact about the local vegetation is, that the roots are entirely exposed. The island is of coral formation, and only very lightly covered with earth; but such is the abundance of the dews, and so great the fertilising quality of the atmosphere, that a plant with one or two feelers caught in the pores of the coraline rock will grow and flourish. There are big trees with all their roots, save one, above ground. Some trees may be noticed growing astride the public walks, with one half of their roots on one side and the rest on the other. The immense amount of decayed animal matter in the coraline makes it one of the richest of soils, and the heavy dews which fall immediately after sunset, and of which I shall speak presently, increase its fertility. A number of "air-plants" grow in the woods, and of course derive their nourishment entirely from the abundant dews. These curious plants are, for the most part, a species of wild pine. One of the most remarkable of them is the "green snake," which looks exactly like a long serpent. The common life-plant of the tropics grows everywhere, and, together with the air-plants, rouses much curiosity among visitors from Europe and North America. If you take one of its thick, waxy leaves, and hang it on a nail, it will live for months, and shoot forth others without needing either water or earth.