BOTANY OF SANTA CRUZ ISLAND. 383 



capsules, and I have diagnosed them from plants raised 

 from seed which I brought home. Perhaps the list does, 

 not enumerate more than two-thirds of the actual species 

 which exist on Santa Cruz. But it numbers more than 

 twice as many plants as have been reported from any other 

 one member of the group. Peculiar circumstances of the 

 distribution of the species, together with the astonishing 

 number of such as are endemic, will make the list appear 

 more like that of some remote and strictly oceanic island 

 than of one lying close beside a great continent. I do not 

 think that continental islands in other parts of the world 

 offer any parallel to what Santa Cruz exhibits in this 

 respect. That a small ridge of mountain rising out of the 

 sea at only twenty -five miles' distance from a mainland shore 

 should present forty-eight species of phanerogamic plants 

 not to be found on the continent itself is, to my understand- 

 ing of the case, a fact entirely unique in the annals of phyto- 

 geography, and I cannot but wonder if competent geo- 

 logical authority will not, after careful investigation, assure 

 us that this group of islands has a very peculiar geological 

 origin and history. There seem to be indications that, as 

 a group, they have contributed to the. flora of the continent 

 as freely as they have received contributions from it. I 

 know not how else to interpret the fact that while those 

 types which are peculiarly and distinctively Californian are 

 strongly predominant on the islands, those which, being 

 found in California, are also common to all North America 

 are but very feebly represented. Delpliiniuin and Banun- 

 cidus, Bihes, Buhus and Lonicera, for example, abound on 

 the Pacific Coast of the continent, but are equally prevalent 

 all the way across it; and the representatives of those genera, 

 and others in the same category, are among the very rarest 

 plants of Santa Cruz, seemiug as if their arrival there had 

 been a late one — too late for them to have secured an 

 ascendency. On the other hand, the distinctively Califor- 

 nian genera, like Dendromecon smdEschscholtzia, Thysanocar- 



