THE AGAVES OF LOWER CALIFORNIA. 41 
in the United: States east of the divide) and of the second 
(Dasylirion, characteristic of the backbone of the continent 
as far north as Texas and Arizona) have failed to pass the 
desert; the wide-spread genus Yucca, which has followed 
Agave in its penetration of the peninsula, though absent 
from California, is represented in the flora of that state by 
two local monotypic genera; and Fouquieria is accompanied 
in Lower California by its odd derivative, Idria. 
The first definitely known Agave of Lower California—or 
Baja California, as it is called in Spanish—was described by 
Engelmann in 1875, under the name A. Shawii. In 1885 a 
related species, A. sebastiana, was made known by Greene. 
In 1888 Baker published the description of a third, A. Pring- 
lei, which had been distributed in Pringle’s exsiccatae of 
1882 under this manuscript name, given it by Engelmann, 
who, however, failed to satisfy himself subsequently that 
it was distinct from A. deserti of the Colorado Desert, which 
he had previously characterized. Without description, Mr. 
Baker also published in 1888 the name A. scaberrima as ap- 
plied to a plant in the Peacock collection that had flowered 
in 1881 and may have been the similarly named plant listed 
by Verschaffelt as early as 1869; no indication of its origin 
is given, but it is mentioned under A. Pringlei as allied. It 
can scarcely have been from Lower California, and remains 
unknown since A. asperrima, which has been given this 
name by error, could hardly have been compared with a 
species related to A. deserti. In 1889 Mr. Brandegee doubled 
the number of species accredited to Lower California by pub- 
lishing A. aurea, A. margaritae and A. sobria. To his intro- 
duction of living plants is also attributable mention of the 
name A. spiralis in 1900, though this is yet uncharacterized. 
In this same year A. Datylio was listed, but it was not until 
1902 that Dr. Weber described it. - 
The present study increases the number of species to 
twenty-two. Considering the sometimes misleading habit 
resemblances of some of them, it is probable that others will 
be found to have been passed by in the territory already ex- 
plored. The small part of the peninsula covered by them 
