526 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1908. 



open air, are those of the University of Arizona, at Tucson, begun 

 by Prof. J. M. Tourney, now of the Yale School of Forestry; and 

 at Eiverside, California, under the direction of Mr. A. S. \ATiite, 

 who has devoted much time and money to the establishment of a 

 magnificent cactus garden. Smaller collections are those of Prof. 

 E. O. Wooton, at Mesilla Park, Nevr Mexico, and a garden established 

 at Laredo, Texas, by Mrs. Anna B. Nickels, the veteran collector of 

 desert jjlants. 



Mrs. Nickels has contributed nuicli to our knowledge of Cactace^e 

 and other xerophytes of Texas and northern Mexico. Specimens 

 collected by her are cited in all modern works on Cactace^, and many 

 of her notes on their properties, uses, and life history are quoted. 

 On a recent trip to Mexico the writer looked forward to visiting her 

 in Laredo, but found that she was no longer there. Fortunately, he 

 afterwards met her at the home of her son in the city of San Luis 

 Potosi. Though she had left her garden behind her, she was still 

 faithful to the ob^'ects of her early love, some of which she had 

 carried with her on her exodus to the patio of her son's house, and 

 there, like Gothe's Waldbliimchen, " they blossom on." Nearly every 

 plant growing in her garden she had collected with her own hands. 

 Many of them were from the valley of the Rio Grande, but for some 

 she had made extensive trips into Mexico, often finding it necessary to 

 make long and painful journeys on muleback, and climbing among 

 sharp rocks and along the escarpment of steep mountains where no 

 animal could find foothold. From an economic view the most in- 

 teresting cactus of her collection was the narcotic mescal button 

 {Lophophora williainsii)^ which she was among the first to bring to 

 the notice of medical men. Her observations as to its use as an intoxi- 

 cant and febrifuge by the Indians were published by Prof. John M. 

 Coulter in his " Preliminary revision of the North American species 

 of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora." " For many years Mrs. 

 Nickels sent valuable consignments of medicinal and other plants of 

 the Mexican boundary region to chemists, manufacturers of drugs, 

 florists, and botanists, both in the United States and Europe. 



Another veteran collector to whom the National Herbarium and 

 the Department of Agriculture are greatly indebted for Mexican 

 plants, both living and dried, and for valuable notes on their medic- 

 inal proj^erties and economic uses, is Dr. Edward Palmer, who at 

 the advanced age of 78 years is still continuing the work he began in 

 his youth. In the cactus houses of the New York Botanical Garden 

 and the Department of Agriculture at "Washington there are many 

 living plants of his collection, the life histories of Avhich are the sub- 

 ject of study by Doctors Britton and Rose ; and in the pharmaceutical 



o Contributions to tlie United States National Herbarium Vol. 8, p. 133. 1894. 



