EWAN: SAN FRANCISCO AS A MECCA FOR NINETEENTH CENTURY NATURALISTS 25 



dealer in natural history specimens, who reported her recent findings in the 

 organ of the Austrian botanical society. About this time Asa Gray mentioned 

 Mrs. Austin's observations in his book Barwiniana, and she published a short 

 note in Coulter's Botanical Gazette for 1878. That year the Austins moved to 

 Big Meadows, Plumas County, where Canby paid her a visit. But in 1881 they 

 moved again, this time to Modoc County, where she made some of the first collec- 

 tions for the county, alone or in company with her daughter. The pages of 

 Pittonia carry frequent mention of the Austin and Bruce collections, some sin • 

 gled out for such recognition as Scutellaria austinae and Collinsia hruceae. 



Comparatively little is known of Mary E. Pulsifer Ames of Auburn, whose 

 plant collections, like those of Mrs. Austin, are occasionally cited in the Botany 

 of California, particularly the second volume. She was evidently at one time a 

 resident of Taylorsville, Indian Valley, a correspondent of C. Keck of Austria, 

 as Avas Mrs. Austin, and a contributor to the California Horticulturist and Floral 

 Magazine. Astragalus pulsiferae of Plumas County was named in her memory 

 by Asa Gray. She died at San Jose, at the age of fifty-seven. 



Gulian Pickering Rixford, the son of a scythe-maker, born in East Highgate, 

 Vermont, came to San Francisco in 1867. Rixford's real interest was evidently 

 horticulture and applied entomology, but he worked as a journalist "to pay ex- 

 penses." For eight years he was on the editorial staff of the Evening Bulletin and 

 its business manager for thirteen years. An ingenious plan to finance the intro- 

 duction of the Smyrna fig from Asia Minor was put up to the proprietor of the 

 Bulletin. Cuttings w^ere to be distributed to three thousand subscribers to the 

 paper as a sort of premium, and gratis to nurserymen and fruit growers. Seventy 

 thousand cuttings were distributed in 1880 by this device. In April, 1892, Rix- 

 ford made incidental collections of some interest in Owens Valley of Inyo 

 County, including Eremolithia Rixforclii, named by Brandegee. In 1913 Rixford 

 was chosen Director of the Academy and in 1930 awarded the Frank N. Meyer 

 Medal for distinguished services in plant introduction. 



English-born Richard Harper Stretch, engineer and entomologist, visited 

 America first in 1861 and finally settled in California in 1867. Educated in 

 Quaker schools abroad and apprenticed to a draper, he became enthusiastic about 

 natural history as a boy. He joined the Academy as a resident member the year 

 he came to California and devoted his time particularly to moths and their 

 taxonomy. Fine drawings of moths executed by him were published in 1874, and 

 later his collection of about five thousand specimens was given to the University 

 of California. Stretch was a close friend of Dr. Behr and of Henry Edwards, 

 following whose death he lost interest in entomology and devoted his time more 

 wholly to engineering. Stretch was the first to call attention in official circles to 

 the presence of the cottony cushion scale in California. He spent his later years 

 in the Puget Sound region. 



Of Henry Nicholson Bolander, Asa Gray wrote in 1868 that "for the last few 

 years no one has done so much as Mr. Bolander for developing the botany of 

 his adopted State, and perhaps no one is likely to do so much hereafter." At that 

 time he dedicated the pretty genus Bolandra of the Saxifrage family to him. 

 Bolander came to Columbus, Ohio, at the age of fifteen, from Schleuchtern, near 

 Frankfort, Germany, his birthplace. In Columbus he came under the influence 

 of Leo Lesquereux, the bryologist, and from this early contact persisted a life-long 



