VOL. It. | Botanical Reminiscences. 3 
As I amat present one of the comparatively few and almost daily 
decreasing survivors of the earlier days of California, and, perhaps, 
with the exception of Prince Paul of Wurtemburg, the only one who 
found timein the years 1850 and 1851, during the gold fever, to pay 
attention to things that were not mineral, I consider it my duty to 
make record of my observations and experiences in this as well as 
in other countries newly opened for settlement, and calculated to 
shed some light on the modus operandi used by nature in changing 
the flora of a district previously little or not at all disturbed by agri- 
culture or by commercial intercourse. 
The wind-swept hills of San Francisco have apparently always 
been rather deficient in trees, but in places somewhat sheltered from 
the blasts a considerable number were formerly to be found. The 
scrub of Quercus agrifolia now to be seen in the park fairly repre- 
sents the oak vegetation, though occasional trees of greater size 
were to be seen. The buckeye grew in some localities into large 
trees, like those examples now growing in Sausalito, near the mouth 
of Wildwood Glen. Near Mountain Lake there were formerly 
entangled thickets of Myrica Californica, and the bay shore from 
Fort Point inward was fringed with laurel ( Umbdellularia California) 
which grew to large size, mixed with thickets of Garrya, Sambucus, 
etc., and the hill tops were crowned by a very extensive chap- 
paral of robust Ceanothus thyrsiflorus. No conifers anywhere in 
the region covered by the city proper came under my eye with 
the exception of a few small ones on Lone Mountain; across the 
bay, however, the Contra Costa Hills were fringed with redwoods 
of such dimensions that the separate trees could be distinguished 
from this place. In my botanical rambles, which frequently. became 
scrambles, I often came upon the camps of woodchoppers, hidden 
away among the tangled thickets of brushwood, their habitants, 
usually French or Italians, turning an honest penny by supplying 
the infant city with fire wood. 
_ The destruction of the trees and shrubs, draining and filling up 
‘the swamps and lakes, etc., has of course banished many of our © 
_ species, one of which, A/sine palustris, has not been found elsewhere. — 
_ The columbine (Aguilegia truncata) and Thalictrum formerly 
: . _ grew on Telegraph Hill. Ranunculus muricatus, now so abundant 
_ in swampy places about the Presidio and the Marine Hospital, I 
first observed about 1860. Acena trifida, a Chilian species of a 
