214 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



from that plant. The flowers of both are unknown, and the 

 species are described from such fruit as could be picked up 

 from the ground, under the bushes which produced them. 

 It may well be that M. macroptera of Magdalena Bay, further 

 down the peninsula, partially fills the hiatus between these 

 and our common little annual, for that is described as having 

 a root probably perennial, fleshy leaves, and a large, pecu- 

 liar involucre. 



Agave Sebastiana. 



Acaulescent: leaves numerous, ascending, thick, glau- 

 cous, about a foot long, ovate-lanceolate, widest above the 

 middle, tapering into a stout spine two inches long : mar- 

 ginal spines remote, divaricate or deflexed : scape very stout, 

 6 — 10 feet high; panicle short and crowded, its branches 

 stout, ascending: umbels many- flowered: flowers yellow; 

 corolla one and a half inches long, the tube broad funnel- 

 form, two -thirds as long as the segmeiits; stamens more 

 than twice the length of the corolla, a little exceeded by the 

 style : capsule linear, prismatic, three inches long. 



Cedros and Natividad Islands; also (according to the seal 

 hunters) on the peninsular shores of the beautiful bay of Se- 

 bastian Yiscaino. It is more like A. Parryi of New Mexico 

 than any other, but very distinct from it, and a much larger 

 plant than its nearest California relative, which is A. deserti. 



3. Notes on Guadalupe Island. 



The Island of Guadalupe lies about midway of the great 

 peninsula of Lower California, and at a distance of about 

 one hundred miles from its coast. It is twenty miles or 

 more in length by eight or ten in breadth, and is of volcanic 

 origin. A tract of land so large, rising out of the sea at so 

 considerable a distance from the continent, would be ex- 

 pected to prove an interesting field for studies in natural 

 history. 



