fWAN: SAN FRANC/SCO AS A MECCA FOR NINETEENTH CENTURY NATURALISTS 27 



and the agaristid moth, AndroJoma bninnani, was named for him ])y Stretch. 



The year 1869 was a critical one in California history, for it brought the 

 completion of the transcontinental railroad. "Sir: we have the honor to report 

 that the last rail is laid, the last spike is driven. The Pacific Railroad is finished" 

 read the telegram sent from Promontorj^ Point, Utah, to President Grant, on 

 May 10, 1869. It was not long before there set in a growing feeling against the 

 large land holdings under the monopolistic control of the few wealthy men or 

 corporations, such as the very group that had won the railroad triumph. "Out 

 of three drops of rain which fall in the San Joaquin Valley, two are owned by 

 Collis P. Huntington." The big strikes of the early years of the Gold Rush were 

 stories now, the whale oil industry began its steady decline. New industries came 

 with the advent of the railroad. Fruit culture was soon the first agricultural 

 interest of the State. This period of economic transition, like the earthquake of 

 1868 and its consequences, brought financial restrictions on the Academy. 



The newly chartered University of California began classes on September 20 

 at its old Oakland campus — it was not until 1873 that the move "five miles to 

 the north to the site christened Berkeley" was made — and a man with scientific 

 traditions, John LeConte, served as its third president jrro tern. His brother, 

 Joseph LeConte, arrived that month to lecture on geology, zoology, and botany; 

 he re-enters our narrative again very soon. 



"When I set out on the long excursion that finally led to California I wandered 

 afoot and alone, from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico, with a plant-press on my back, 

 holding a generally southward course, like the birds when they are going from 

 summer to winter. 



So wrote John Muir. After a near-fatal siege of fever in Florida and a short stay 

 in Cuba, Muir arrived in San Francisco by way of the Panama steamer. He 

 soon set out on foot for the Yosemite. My First Summer in the Sierra was his 

 diary of 1869. For the next six years Muir — "the wiry young man with auburn 

 hair, full beard, and electric blue eyes had one trait that outweighed all other 

 elements in his nature, the trait of persistence" — absorbed the geology, zoology, 

 and botany of the region and became in turn guide for geologist Joseph LeConte, 

 lepidopterist Henry Edwards, and, in 1872, botanist John Torrey on his second 

 visit to California. Muir wrote "Harry" Edwards under date of June 6, 1872 : 



Your bundle of butterfly apparatus is received. You are now in constant remem- 

 brance, because every flying flower is branded with your name. I shall be among the 

 high gardens in a month or two and will gather you a good handful of your favorite 

 painted honeysuckers and honeysuckles. I wish you all the deep far-reaching joy you 

 deserve in your dear sunful pursuits. 



On February 22, 1873, Muir wrote Asa Gray : 



Our winter is very glorious. January was a block of solid sun-gold, not the thin 

 frosty kind, but of a quality that called forth butterflies and tingled the fern coils 

 and filled the noontide with dreamy hum of insect wings. 



Eventually Muir moved down to the big city to write up his Sierra experiences, 



which appeared first in such journals as the Overland Monthly. 



Some of my grandfathers must have been born on a muirland, for there is heather 

 in me. and tinctures of bog juices, that send me to Cassiope, and oozing through all 

 my veins impel me unhaltingly through endless glacier meadows, seemingly the deeper 

 and danker the better. 



