310 
about fifteen mileseast of Daggett, San Bernardino County; Califor- 
nia. Upon this one specimen all knowledge of the species has 
rested for thirty years. 
The Death Valley Expedition sent out by the U.S. Depart- 
ment of Agriculture entered Death Valley in January, 1891, and 
camped for several days at Bennett Wells. On the evening of 
our arrival I walked eastward from camp a few hundred yards to 
the margin of the salt marsh in the bottom of the valley, and there, 
amidst the other vegetation peculiar to the densely alkaJine moist 
soil about the salt flat, I found in fruit a Juncus evidently related 
to, but clearly distinct from, both J. Remerianus and J. acutus 
spherocarpus. A subsequent examination showed it to be the 
long lost J. Cooperi. It was subsequently found to occur in several 
places in Death Valley, about the old Eagle Borax Works, on the 
east side of the valley opposite Bennett Wells, about four miles 
south of Furnace Creek ranch, near the Coleman Borax Works, 
two miles east of the same ranch in Furnace Creek Cafion, and 
at Saratoga Springs. Eastward from Death Valley it was found 
at several places in Resting Springs Valley, California, and at Ash 
Meadows, Nevada, points in the watershed of the Amargosa 
River, and in the Vegas Wash, Nevada, about eight miles from 
the great bend of the Colorado River. West of Death Valley it 
was seen only at Hot Springs, Panamint Valley. 
At all its stations the plant grows in soil like that described 
above, and in tufts sometimes composed of only a few stems OF 
occasionally attaining the extraordinary diameter of 2 meters. Upon 
the new material collected, the following description is based : 
Juncus Cooperi, Engelm. Trans. St. Louis Acad. ii. 590 (1868). 
Plant perennial, densely tufted, 60 to 80 cm. high. Roots large, 
unbranched and 2 to 3 mm. thick near the base, composed of a 
slender vascular central thread surrounded by soft parenchyma 
tissue and an epidermis; rootstocks short, closely branched ; 
stems erect, rigid, terete or slightly compressed, striate, leafless 
between the inflorescence and the base ; lower sheaths light brown, 
shining, bladeless, but with a filiform-aristate appendage about 10 
mm. long; upper I to 4 sheaths stramineous to light green, bear- 
ing a stiffly erect spine-pointed terete leaf exactly resembling the 
stem ; inflorescence paniculate, its lower leaves erect, exceeding 
the panicle, about 10 cm. or less in length, otherwise like the 
root-leaves; branches of the panicle erect or nearly so, 8 cM. 
