Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/46

42 within four or five hours' walk from Cinchona, and they thus offer the investigator very diverse specific and vegetational types within easy reach of the station. Any one of them also could be made a substation at which an investigator resident at Cinchona could carry on physiological

or climatological work. Indeed, the variety of conditions available is far greater than has been indicated. Within half a day's ride from Cinchona a botanist can reach the steaming tropical lowlands of the north side of the island, the warm valleys and dry ridges of the southern slopes, and even the hot plains, coastal deserts, mangrove swamps and coral reefs of the south shore.

It will make clear the unusual fitness of Cinchona as a tropical station if we here summarize its various advantages of location, surroundings, equipment and accessibility.