Because Jamaica is famous for its woods and plants and scented blossoms, one may be pardoned for roughly cataloguing a few of the three or four thousand different species of flowering plants, ferns and forest trees. Little is known of the lichens, mosses and fungi of the island. The casual explorer will notice the beauty of the mosses, and he will observe many varieties of the lichen, and there, unless he happens to be an expert botanist, his interest in these smaller plants will end. But with the flowering plants, the shrubs, and the gorgeous trees it is different. No matter whether one is a botanist or a heathen, frequently the wild luxuriance of a lovely bush forces us to ask its name. And the name frequently cements one’s first affection for a wild plant’s loveliness. The _Hibiscus_, the blue and white _lignum vitae_ flower, the yellow _Kill Buckra weed_, the evening primrose and the passion flower, the wild convolvulus, the iris and the orchid. All these are fascinating names representing fascinating plants and blossoms. In Jamaica, one drives through wild jungleland, and mistakes it for a cultivated garden. Green bushes are spangled with flowers of flaming scarlet; yellow bands of dense scrub are patched with fragrant blooms of the most exquisite blue. The wild passion flower, gawdy yet dignified, is to be seen everywhere, and in many places, especially on the lower slopes of the blue mountains, we find a rich profusion of the mysterious orchids--_Arpophyllum spicatum_, _Phaius grandifolius_, _Dendrophylax funalis_, and a hundred other species. The forty varieties of the convolvulus deserve a chapter to themselves. What could be more beautiful than a field smothered by these graceful flowers, showing every tint from scarlet to rose colour, violet, crimson, blue and yellow? Then there are the poppies, the Mexican thistle and John Crow bush; the buttercups, the wild pansies, sweet-william, the scented furze, the acres of white clover and the dandelion. We could go through a list of thousands. I think there is no bush, certainly there is no acre of rural Jamaica, that does not contain its floral decorations, its dozen brilliant blossoms. Of the trees, the first that thrusts itself upon the notice of the English traveller is the cocoanut palm, which Mark Twain or some one else once described as an inverted feather dusting-brush. Besides the cocoa palm there are a dozen other species--the groo groo, silver thatch, mountain cabbage, oil palm, and the rest. In the Savannahs, near the coast, we notice the French cotton-tree, and among the malarial swamps the long-rooted mangrove--a tree which is a certain indication of the unhealthiness of its neighbourhood. Inland, we [Illustration: HUT ON A PLANTATION, JAMAICA]