DR. HENRY N. BOLANDER, BOTANICAL EXPLORER. 105 



when it is recalled to mind that the chief resource for the study of 

 flowering plants in the earliest days of the Academy was Dr. Behr's 

 copy of Endlicher's Genera Plantarum. 



Of the little that Bolander put in print, there is most interest for 

 me in a forty-four-page pamphlet entitled, "A Catalogue of Plants 

 Growing in the Vicinity of San Francisco," by Henry N. Bolander, 

 late State Botanist, San Francisco, 1870. The catalogue, now a 

 rarity, is a large quarto, and was published by the pioneer firm of 

 A. Roman & Co., whose typographical and press work was of a very 

 high character. The text is disposed in three columns, giving the 

 "Latin Name," "English Name," and "Natural Habitat" of each 

 species. The limits of the region included are not defined, but a 

 few localities appear, such as " Mark West Creek," " Napa Valley," 

 " Monte del Diablo," and " Monterey." The catalogue includes the 

 flowering plants, ferns, mosses, hepatics, and lichens, the list of 

 grasses and sedges being especially full ; in all, about thirteen 

 hundred species are recorded. 



The range of Bolander's activity can be illustrated in another 

 way. The distribution of his plants brought him into correspond- 

 ence with the prominent botanists of the time in America and 

 Europe; there are few names that one does not find in the inter- 

 esting budget of correspondence which he carefully preserved. No 

 one wrote more cheery epistles than Dr. C. C. Parry — chatty and 

 inspiriting accounts of his comings and goings from Davenport to 

 Cambridge and across to Europe ; no one referred with greater 

 pleasure to the interviews and visits he had had with botanists and 

 pioneer Californians on the Pacific Coast ; and no one was more 

 appreciative of Bolander's generosity. An equally good friend was 

 John Torrey, who, as he said, preferred visiting California to any 

 other part of the world ; he expressed his great regret at not meeting 

 Bolander at the Agassiz Reception at the California Academy in 

 1872, and runs on so much concerning things Californian that he 

 asks his correspondent not to accuse him of "narrative old age," a 

 phrase which, by the way, occurs also in the opening chapters of 

 Scott's " Waverley." Torrey's friendship was shown in a particular 

 case most notably, for it was at his instance that Lafayette College 

 conferred upon the Californian explorer the title of Doctor of Phi- 

 losophy. Prof. D. C. Eaton, of Yale, wrote in reply very exact 



