CONTRIBUTIONS TO WESTERN BOTANY NO. IS O 



emergence and subsidence of island masses,, in fact there are almost no 

 beaches at all, which shows that the emergence of the islands lias been 

 rapid and recent. Practically all the islands are volcanic or of highly 

 altered schists and volcanic flows, indicating their cause to have heen 

 lateral pressure in ocean sediments some twenty miles out From the shore, 

 causing the usual uplifts, foldings and metamorphoses which we see all 

 along the ancien't shore lines of the Coast ranges and the Sierras, and 

 about all other world mountains paralleling the shore lines. The occur- 

 rence of Styrax, Lyonothamnus, Erythea, and many ^otber genera now 

 widely scattered over the Earth indicate tlie extreme age of the flora of 

 California and the continuance of a Tropical flora in California from the 

 Tertiary to the present. In my opinion the flora of the islands is tlie 

 product of ordinary transportation agencies, and nothing else. 



In the mechanical makeup of the botany the book shows the lack of 

 e::pert direction in spacing and typography. Names of Families should be 

 in larger t>p)e than genera. It would be far better to separate families by 

 wide spaces, and by hea\y faced caps at least twice as large as fhose of 

 genera. Doubtless the main cause was demand for less pages in a manual 

 already too large, but a few pages more would not make enough differ- 

 ence to notice. I think the use of a secondary accent in long words ijs 

 nonsensical, such as Sclaginellaceae, particularly wliere it is not consist- 

 ently used. Lycopodiaceae should have had the secondary accent on "po'"* 

 but there is none. There is no reason why Selaginella struthioloides 

 should have the secondary accent on the first *'i." We are informed thr.t 

 Dr. Bradley is authority for the pronunciation of the Latin words. If so 

 Dr. Bradley would have difficulty in getting classical authority Tor accent- 

 ing the first "i." 



On page 409 Jepson quotes Cleomella pubescens Nutt. There never 

 V\'as any such species. On the preceding page he gives Cleomella ohtusi- 

 folia van pubescens Jepson n. comb, when it should have been Nelson 

 Biol. Soc. Wash. 18 172 1905. 



On page 363 he puts the accent on the wrong syllable in Scopulo- 

 phila. 



On page 252 he keeps up the wholly untenable Agave consoclata 

 Trelease, which has no standing at all, bein^ A. deserti. 



On page 247 Jepson fails to give any accurate descfipfion of Yucca 

 Mohavensis and Y. baccata. Whether Y. Mohavensls "is really distinct 

 from Y. macrocarpa is yet to be determined, but the real distinfniishing 



characters are the following: Y. Mohavensis plants with a trunk often 

 10 feet high and a rosette of leaves at the ends. Leaves 2-3 feet lonj^, 

 very concave, coarsely fibrous-margined, apple-green. Flowers mostly 

 globose or nearly so, 2-3 inches long, white. Pods fleshy, '3-4 inches long, 

 oblong, generally constricted in the middle cross wise. FLowers very many 



