EWAN: SAN FRANCISCO AS A MECCA FOR NINETEENTH CENTURY NATURALISTS 17 



bulbs of the lily, Lilium ivashingtonianum, for his English employer but the 

 steamer Central America, which carried them, was lost at sea. lie wrote W. -I. 

 Hooker that he was going to make an effort to replace them. Evidently he visited 

 the Academy often, and in 1858 he wrote Hooker of his pleasure at finding 

 Beechey's Voyage, Torrey's works, and other books in the Academy's library. 

 He lived in "Chinese House" on Eleventh Street between Market and Mission 

 streets, and may have associated with William Lobb, then a resident of the city, 

 but of that friendship we have no hint. One of Bridges' most profitable trips 

 w^as to the mining town of Silver Mountain on the east slope of the Sierra Nevada 

 near Ebbetts Pass in 1863. There he met William II. Brewer and Brewer wrote : 



It was a relief to meet Mr. Bridges, an old rambler and botanical collector, well 

 known to all botanists. ... It was a relief to meet him and talk botany; yet, even 

 he is affected — he has dropped botany and is here speculating in mines. "Mining 

 fever" is a terrible epidemic; when it is really in a community, lucky is the man 

 who is not affected by it. Yet a feiv become immensely rich. 



In April, 1865, Bridges set out on a collecting trip to Nicaragua but was stricken 

 with malaria and died at sea, September 9, 1865, en route back to San Francisco 

 on the steamer Moses Taylor. Captan Blethen, Bridges' friend, brought his 

 body to San Francisco and he was carried to the ultima thule of the city. Lone 

 Mountain Cemetery. 



One of the most colorful figures in the history of California's progress in 

 science was Andrew Jackson Grayson. Born at the Grayson cotton plantation 

 on the Ouachita River in northern Louisiana, August 20, 1819, he traveled widely, 

 won and lost, and died three days short of his fiftieth birthday at the Mexican 

 port of San Bias. Grayson made the overland trip from Independence, Missouri, 

 in 1846, with his young wife and child, and reached California in October. The 

 Donner party traveled with them as far as Fort Bridger, when the emigrants 

 separated, the Donner party pushing on to tragic death, the Graysons to some 

 considerable fortune in the "diggins," followed by a less fortunate venture into 

 the mercantile business. Finally Grayson tried his hand at trapping, and it was 

 during this period, when he occasionally visited the Mercantile Library in San 

 Francisco, that he chanced upon Audubon's Birds of America. He was so deeply 

 thrilled with the paintings that he determined to match them for the birds of the 

 Pacific slope. So ardently did he adopt Audubon's flamboyant style, sketching 

 the birds in stiff or unnatural postures, that he quite aptly may be called the 

 "Audubon of the Pacific." Grayson also gave his bird portraits backgrounds of 

 quite accurate, if occasionally mixed, delineations of the native plants. From 

 1855 to 1857 Grayson made sketches of the birds about San Jose and the Napa 

 Valley, and in 1857 sailed for Tehuantepec on the Mary Taylor. But his plan 

 to include the Mexican fauna in his opus was dealt a blow by the wreck of the 

 schooner in the bay of Ventosa, when his books, drawings, paper stock, and colors 

 were ruined. Penniless, he took up a job as surveyor to recover his funds, but 

 he found drawing paper impossible to procure and he turned to the preparation 

 of bird skins. Some of these reached S. F. Baird, who was most enthusiastic about 

 them. After a visit to San Francisco, Grayson returned to Mexico in company 

 with J. M. Hutchings, of "Yo-Semite Valley" fame, determined to settle at 

 Mazatlan and sketch the local birds for his book. During this period he wrote 

 travel articles for the Overland 3Ionthly and the press. John Xantus was his 



