1923] St. John, —William Conklin Cusick 103 
I was so fortunate as to make the acquaintance of Dr. R. D. Nevius, 
and in the fall of 1880 Dr. S. Watson spent a few days at my cabin. 
I got much botanical information from these gentlemen." In 1887 
the brothers sold this place and both moved to North Powder where 
they bought adjoining ranches. The two brothers still continued 
coóperating in the farm work. William's ranch, however, consisted 
largely of pasture land. Consequently he was able to leave his farm 
work and go on extended botanical trips. 
His first lengthy trip was in 1885 when he went to Steins Mountains 
in Malheur County. The year 1886, he was able to devote the whole 
season to collecting. He gathered his specimens in sets of twelve and 
made arrangements to sell his duplicates. This proved to be profitable 
enough so that he followed this scheme almost every year afterwards. 
Following a period of several years when he was prevented from 
doing any extensive botanical work, he resumed this activity in 1896. 
In August of that year, with Prof. C. V. Piper, he made a collecting 
trip into the Wallowa Mountains. In 1897 he revisited Malheur 
County and pushed on to Harney County. In 1898 he revisited Steins 
Mountains, and continued as far as the Santa Rosa Mountains of 
Nevada. The next year, 1899, he explored the Seven Devil Moun- 
tains in western Idaho. In 1901, with his step-son Oscar, he explored 
the eastern and southeastern counties of Oregon. The following 
year, 1902, accompanied by his nephew R. G. Cusick, he worked the 
central part of the State, then the southwestern, as far down as the 
California line, and returned by Crater Lake. On returning from 
this trip he wrote, “ Southwestern Oregon is certainly a very interesting 
region but I fear I cannot go there again. I think this is my last 
season of collecting to sell. There is not enough pay in it. Expenses 
are very heavy and after these are paid there isn’t much left for me.” 
This was his last long trip. On his first ones he went alone, but in 
later years his step-son, O. A. Cusick, or his nephew, R. G. Cusick, 
accompanied him. 
Year after year, he explored and made collections from the Blue 
Mountains and the Wallowas. These trips, though often lasting sev- 
eral weeks, were usually made alone. He never carried fire arms or 
fishing tackle as he felt that when unmolested the wild animals 
would not trouble him, and that he was too busy with his botanical 
collecting to waste any time in fishing. He would load his botanical 
outfit and camping materials on a pony and start off into the most 
rugged mountains, or with a team of horses anda wagon into the 
