CONTRIBUTIONS TO WESTERN IluTANY NO. 16 



1 -utions No. 15, it should be stated that this is a shrub, 4-6 feet high, with a 

 distinct woody trunk an inch in diameter, with smooth bark, having the habit 

 of the shrubby Encelias of the Cape region of Lower California. 



Arenaria aberrans N. Sp. Plants densely caespitose and woody, about 

 6 inches high and simple and erect from very short and decumbent bases. 

 Leaves densely clustered and rapidly reduced above to hyaline bracts with 

 green midveins above, arcuate, triquetrous, needle-tipped, an inch long, 

 hispidulous below but appearing glaucotl margined, from 



a much widened and hyaline base, upper bracts shorter than the calyx. 

 S cms glandular , ; w th't middl ■ as are the pedicels. Inflorescence open, a 

 simple or compound cyme, 3-7 flowered. Flowers white, about 7 mm. long 

 and about as wide. Sepals oval-ovate, 4 mm. long, green and shining in the. 

 middle and obscurely 9-nerved for 1/3 the width, the rest hyaline, barely 

 acute when fresh, appressed. Petals elliptical and 7 mm. long and a little 

 longer than the stamens with oval and purple anthers. Capsules conspicu- 

 ously inflated, deltoid in outline, green, twice as long as the sepals, splitting 

 into 5 lobes at tip and which are purple within. Box Elder County, Utah. 

 Coil am No. 4159. 



In June, 1929, I visited El Tobar on the southern side of the Grand 

 C\non and saw the stately monument erected to Major Powell and the band 

 i ! C )vern;ii nt m< n who accompanied him down the Colorado river in 1871. 

 on that blood curdling trip. The secrecy that has always surrounded that 

 trip and his work surveying the Grand Canon has always been a puzzle to 

 rne. Forty years ago or more I made the acquaintance of one of his party, 

 the topographer, Captain F. M. Bishop of Salt Lake City, and he was a 

 fellow townsman for many years till my removal to California. His her- 

 barium made on that expedition has always been in my own collection, all 

 not now at Harvard. 

 On the visit referred to I failed to see his name among the list of those 

 who traversed the Grand Canon, and for this reason I hunted him up, now a 

 - ery old man, at Salt Lake, and conferred with him about the matter. Dur- 

 ing the conversation his daughter showed me a transcript of his diary, frag- 

 mentary but complete as far as it went, which throws a flood of light on the 

 expedition, and its asinine management. I borrowed the M.S. and have 

 copied it, and some day, may possibly publish it. Captain Bishop was one 

 of the very few educated men in the party, and was the center of the botani- 

 cal activity, making the best collection, but Mrs. Thompson, the sister of 

 Major Powell, sent her collections to Harvard independently. Captain 

 Bishop was later on the Professor of Botanv at the State University in Salt 

 Take City. 



