Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/432

428 of gardens and experimental plantations, and this, together with other reasons, caused the postponement of the movement.

During the autumn of 1902 Mr. William Fawcett, the director of the public gardens and plantations of the island, was in New York, together with Sir Daniel Morris, the imperial commissioner of agriculture for the British West Indies, and at that time the matter was discussed again with them, and this gave an emphasis to the reconsideration of earlier plans, for both nursery and laboratory. The decision of the colonial government to rent Cinchona, and transfer most of the work there carried on to other plantations, was reached

only last summer, and as it was feared in Jamaica that the property might be diverted from its most desirable purposes, I concluded, after consultation with a number of persons interested, to assume the rental of the property, with the idea of carrying out both plans if possible. Dr. MacDougal immediately went to Jamaica, after Professor Underwood's return, and made the necessary arrangements for the lease and for the caretaking of the property. I communicated this action by mail to over sixty of the botanists and horticulturists of this country and Europe, who expressed the most enthusiastic appreciation of the scheme. My action was approved by the scientific directors of the New York Botanical Garden in October, and arrangements have since