File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (17972539880).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo16amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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On entering the harbor of San Juan, the ship passes close to El Morro ("The Castle"), an old fortress at the western end of the city Porto Rico By HENRY E. CRAMPTON THE island of Porto Rico undoubtedly surpasses all other regions of equal size — certainly of the New World — in the variety and number of its features that arouse vivid interest. The extent of the island is not great, for its irregular oblong mass is only one hundred miles in length and about thirty-five miles in breadth, or approximately three times as large as Long Island; yet its inhabitants number more than 1,200,000, thus making it more thickly populated than any other equivalent area in the Western Hemisphere, excepting certain portions of New England. Its place in history is a large one, for since its discovery by Columbus in 1493, it has served as the battle ground of Spanish, Dutch, and English, and as a haven for the buccaneers who operated throughout the Spanish Main. Even in purely scientific respects it commands the interest of many a department of investigation, because its different portions display unusually varied geological and topographical characters. They also support well diversified forms of plant and animal life, whose study is especially important on account of the island's value as a link in the Antillean chains that connect North and South America with each other and with Mexico. Hence the problems of evolution, distribution and migration, of human beings as well as of organic forms in general, are particularly well defined and engaging in the case of Porto Rico.^ 1 For these and other reasons, the New York Academy of Sciences has undertaken a prolonged and comprehensive survey of the island, for which it has gained the support of the Insular Government and active participation on the part of the New York Botanical Gardens, the American Museum of Natural History, and other institutions. More than a score of investigators have already taken the field for work in anthropology, botany, geology, pateontology, and zoology As one of these, I have twice visited Porto Rico, and have become somewhat familiar with the delightful scenes with which the present brief article is concerned. — The Author. 59

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