92 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
Notes on Californian Plants. 
Much to the credit of the American government, instructions are 
given in their Exploratory journeys, for collecting objects of Natural 
History. This has been eminently the case with their various expedi- 
tions to the westward of the Rocky mountains, as we have had occasion 
to observe when alluding to Fremont's journeys. 
A work which we have just seen, published at New York, 1848, by Capt. 
Emory, entitled Notes on a Military Reconnoissance from Fort Leaven- 
worth, in Missouri, to San Diego in California, including parts of Arkan- 
sas, del Norte, and Gila rivers, is a confirmation of the spirit of discovery 
fostered by persons in authority in the United States. Besides a very 
extensive and valuable map of the route, this volume is accompanied 
y a great number of excellent, views of the scenery of the country 
(exhibiting some vegetable features), an appendix by Dr. Torrey on the — 
plants collected, with twelve plates of new species, and another supple- 
ment by Dr. Engelmann on the Cactee observed on the route, together 
with two plates exhibiting several species, but along so minute a scale, 
and with no attention to botanical character, that they are of little or 
no value. 
The journey occupied six months. From the 27th of June to July 
the 11th, the party traversed the country between Fort Leavenworth — 
and the head of the Arkansas, a rich prairie between the thirty-ninth 
and thirty-eighth parallels of latitude. Here trees are only seen along 
the margins of streams, and the general appearance of the country is 
that “of vast rolling fields enclosed with colossal hedges.” The 
trees are Ash, Burr-Oak, black Wallnut, Chestnut Oak, black Oak, 
long-leaved Willow, Sycamore, Buck-eye, American Elm, Pig-nut 
Hickory, Hack-berry, and Sumach. Towards the west, on approaching 
the 99th meridian of longitude, the growth along the streams becomes 
almost exclusively Cotton-wood (Populus Canadensis). Thence the tra- 
vellers entered the valley of the Arkansas, and the country soon be- - 
came an arid barren waste, indicated by the occurrence of Cacti and 
spinous plants, the first of which were seen in longitude 98°. There, 
too, Buffalo-grass began to appear (Sesleria ? dactyloides, Nutt.), $0 
called because it is the chief fodder of the buffalo during the season 
that it flourishes. On the Ist of August they crossed the plain to the 
