24 A CENTURY OF PROGRESS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



5985 Telegraph Avenue, more or less completely filling a large frame house with 

 their plants, books, and the kind of enthusiasm that effectively combats the 

 paralysis of poverty, which followed them from the beginning. The house was 

 easily identified by a large wooden sign bearing in capital letters the words "Lem- 

 mon Herbarium." Taking every travel opportunity that presented itself the 

 couple managed to reach distant points in Arizona, the Mount Shasta region, and 

 the San Bernardino Mountains of southern California, taking specimens in sets 

 for sale and exchange. With near idolatrous devotion they sent the first specimen 

 to Professor Gray, and as soon as he responded with the identifications they so 

 eagerly awaited they distributed the duplicates, printed up circulars, and sent 

 off scripts to the press of wild potatoes, resurrection ferns, and outsize records 

 of California trees. From 1888 to 1892 Lemmon was botanist to the California 

 State Board of Forestry and during this period published Pines of the Pacific 

 Slope and Cone-hearers of California. This last duodecimo handbook was a kind 

 of forerunner of the popular pocket guides of today. The Lemmon collection, 

 rich in isotypes and early records, ultimately came to the University of California 

 but the transcription of the data, written hastily on the margins of the news- 

 papers, suffered somewhat in the curating process. It is unfortunate that the 

 specimens lacked original labels bearing Lemmon 's own record of the data for 

 some facts may be learned from a comparative study of the labels made at dif- 

 ferent times in his lifetime. "J. G. Lemmon and wife" (as the labels read in the 

 older herbaria, bearing witness to a marital warmth that they shared in adversity) 

 were self-sacrificing bearers in the caravan of botanical discovery. 



Three women who lived in northeastern California and were enthusiastically 

 interested in plant study were Rebecca Merritt Austin, her daughter, Mrs. C. C. 

 Bruce, and Mary E. Pulsifer Ames. Better known to Asa Gray and Eastern 

 botanists than to most at the California Academy, their plant collections and 

 field notes gave the foundation to our knowledge of the vegetation of that region. 

 "R. M. Austin," as she labeled her collections, came with her husband and children 

 to the gold mines of Black Hawk Creek of Plumas County in 1865. There she 

 began collecting plants and other objects of natural history with no thought of 

 the particular value of her "hobby." Early in 1872 John Gill Lemmon, while 

 peddling books in the mining towns of Sierra Valley, visited her. We may imagine 

 Lemmon showed Mrs. Austin Hittell's Resources of California, Scott's Wedge of 

 Gold, and perhaps Mrs. Clarke's Teaching of the Ages, but it would be sport to 

 know if he took orders for Bret Harte's Luck and Stoddard's South Sea Idylls. 

 But we do know that Lemmon was exultant when he saw Mrs. Austin's specimens 

 displayed in a "cabinet" made from a soap box. Jepson says that "those who 

 knew the exuberant Lemmon will readily credit the story as related by Mrs. 

 Austin" that "he took off his hat and gave three cheers for the woman who was 

 cooking for miners and at the same time trying to study nature under such 

 adverse circumstances." The Austins removed in 1875 to Butterfl}^ Valley and 

 there she carried out her studies on the pitcher plant Darlingtonia known to the 

 local residents as the "cobra plant." Mrs. Austin observed that the amount of 

 fluid increased in the pitchers when they were stimulated by the introduction of 

 bits of meat. One of her earliest correspondents was William M. Canby, of Wil- 

 mington, Delaware, to whom she wrote no less than twenty letters on the Dar- 

 Ungto7iia studies. She was also in touch with C. Keck, an Austrian botanist and 



