OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 153 



3. Enumeration of a Collection of Dried Plants made by L. 

 J. Xantus, at Cape San Lucas, ^^c. in Lower Califor- 

 nia, between August, 1859, and February, 1860, and com- 

 municated to the Smithsonian Institution. By Asa Gray. 



Such scanty knowledge as we have hitherto possessed of the bot- 

 any of Lower or Peninsular California was nearly all supplied by the 

 notes and hasty collection made by the late Mr. Hinds, in the voyage 

 of the British surveying ship Sulphur, which touched at the Bay of 

 Magdalena, Cape San Lucas, &c., late in the autumn of 1839. These 

 notes, and an account of the collection, with descriptions of the new 

 species by Mr. Bentham, were published in the Botany of the Voyage 

 of the Sulphur, in 1844. The present collection was made by the in- 

 defatigable Mr. Xantus, at San Lucas and the vicinity, while in the 

 employment of the U. S. Coast Survey in charge of a station for tidal 

 observations. Small as this collection is, it contains not a few novel- 

 ties, and I trust is an earnest of many more. Where the coast fur- 

 nishes so large a percentage of new species, the interior, and especially 

 its mountains, may be expected to yield a richer harvest to future ex- 

 plorers. Mr. Xantus has already made one successful visit to the 

 mountains within his reach, with very interesting zoological results. 

 At the same time he made a good botanical collection, which has most 

 unfortunately been lost. 



The numbers in the ensuing list are those under which the speci- 

 mens have been distributed, as far as the extent of the collection 

 allowed, among leading herbaria, the full set being reserved for the 

 national collection in charge of the Smithsonian Institution. 



1. Argemone Mexican a, Linn. 



2. Lyrocarpa Coulteri, Hook. & Harv. in Lond. Jour. Bot. 4, 

 p. 76, t. 4. — Radix annua. Folia inferiora cordato-oblonga, repanda, 

 petiolo longo submarginato, superiora brevi-petiolata, dentata vel in- 

 cisa. Petala latiora quam in exemp. Coulterianis, elongato-spathulata, 

 rosea? post anthesin purpurascentia. Fructus haud maturus. 



3. PoLTGALA Xanti (sp. nov.) : nana, cinereo-pubescens ; caulibus 

 adscendentibus e caudice perenni usque ad racemum densiflorum folio- 

 sis ; foliis ovalibus subaveniis breviter petiolatis ; floribus (majusculis) 

 mox recurvis ; pedicellis bractea sepalisque angustis tequilongis ; alis 

 ovali-oblongis ; carina imbei-bi ; fructu ovato sinu profundo emargiuato 



VOL. V. 20 



