258 The Plant World. 



iforn'.a is upwards of 150 miles in a straight line, and the 

 longer route necessarily followed leads through a region 

 hitherto unexplored. 



The party included a botanist, a geographer, and a 

 zoologist, with the necessary helpers, and a full month was 

 taken for the expedition. The route lay through a region 

 of cactus plains walled in by rugged mountains, past the old 

 Mexican settlement of Sonoyta in the oasis of that name, by 

 dead volcano cones and over rough wastes flanked by peaks 

 fo'*med of molten lava, into the extremely arid country lying 

 east of the head of the Gulf of California. 



The scientific results of the expedition include important 

 data regarding distribution in altitude of various desert plants 

 and their habits as the southern limit of their range is ap- 

 proached, observations of the range and habits of various 

 animals, among which should be specifically mentioned the 

 mountain sheep of Mexico, which "represent the end of the 

 great chain of sheep which stretches without a break from 

 * * * the Barbary States of North Africa to its jumping-off 

 place at Pinacate and in Lower California." The excellent 

 maps and photographs and the vivid descriptions of topo- 

 graphical features enable one to obtain a very satisfactory 

 conception of this wild region together with the salient fea- 

 tures of its plant and animal life. 



Many books have been written about plants by authors 

 who are not botanists, and amateurs in the subject of heredity 

 and evolution have long been prone to air their incomplete 

 information, but if any of this fraternity have produced a 

 book as innocent of any really tenable interpretation of the 

 facts cited as Henslow's "Heredity of Acquired Characters 

 in Plants," it has not come to the notice of the editors of the 

 Plant World. To ooint out his mistakes in his relation of 

 facts would be to reprint a fair share of the book, and to 

 demonstrate the author's inconsequent reasoning would mean 

 the repetition of his entire thesis. The book in question 



