CONTRIBUTIONS TO WESTERN BOTANY NO. 16 



; with him in the late seventies, and he sent me a set of his Texas 

 plants. He was much interested in mosses and was very anxious I should 

 get him many mosses, in my various expeditions. His name often appears 

 in the description of mosses by Ausin. He was an indefatigable collector. 



Harry N. Patterson. He lived at Oquawka, Illinois, and was the son 

 of the Patterson who owned the Rocky Mountain News. Harry was a 

 printer by profession and got out a check list of North American plants; he 

 5 much interested in ( .It !<> ! it ;. ; and 



PARISH. 



Since the MS. of m? L-- Contri! utions was written, another and next to 

 the last of the old guard has slipped away into the unknown. S. B. Parish 

 was a polished gentleman of the old school. If he ever had an enemy no one 

 ever knew it. I never knew him to write but one caustic comment, and that 

 was on the disreputable C. R. Orcutt, who also has passed away in Mexico 

 recently. His name is intimately connected with the b ■• m of southern Cali- 

 fornia. He owned a ranch when I first met him in San Bernardino, and he 

 used to take many trips out on the desert in all directions, and he discov- 

 ered many new species of plants. He was a valued correspondent of mine 

 for many years, which correspondence continued till his death. One of his 

 last letters said that "the hill became steeper and longer" every day between 

 his home and the herbarium at Berkeley, for he died of old age. A great 

 calamity befell him in the Berkeley fire a few years ago, when his home was 

 burned, and with it all his botanical notes and a complete MS. of a book on 

 the flora of southern California. Parish and Mrs. Brandegee were the two 

 most competent to write on the Flora of California, and both died without 



A. L. SILER. 



During the survey of the Grand Canon by the Government, Major 

 Powell who was at the head of the survey, had his> headquarters at Kanab, 

 P'tah. His sister, Mrs. Thompson, was an amateur botanist who collected 

 quite a number of native | to Dr. Gray for naming, 



among them being a few new », < t , of pi * - It, < m , imong the natives 

 magnified her work into grotesque propoi ings do. Living 



at Kanab was an old farmer who became int rested, md who figured that he 

 might make some money out of collecting native plants and sending them 

 east and to Europe. He was Siler, a kindly and ignorant old man, a Mor- 

 mon and a polygamist. He was about seven feet tall, and as slim as a rail, 

 and wore about a No. 14 shoe. He was awkward and uncouth, but a real 

 man. He had a ranch up on the plateau among the pinons and junipers at a 

 place called Ranch, where I visited him in 1890. He specialized on cactus, 

 and sent his stuff to Engelmann for naming. He explored the steep slopes 

 of the Grand Canon and got many interesting pedes. At Pipe Spring, 



