52 PITTONIA. 
Thirty-four y years later the rising Swedish authority arbitra- 
rily set, et the then old and well established name Pittonia, and 
put his own new and more cumbrous Tournefortia i in its place. 
So then, the name that heads these pages is not newly 
coined ; is far from being an original conception of the present 
writer. And all this is well known to the few of our botanists 
who do not ignore the fact that there existed a botanical 
nomenelature before Linné. 
The name Pittonia as here employed may do double duty 
as commemorative of two great pre-Linnsan botanists, the 
immortal Joseph Pitton of Tournefort and his illustrious col- 
league, Father Plumier, whose immense labors and whose 
valuable publications were chiefly upon the botany of tropical 
America. 
A CuRIOUS COLLINSIA. 
I was lately erossing the Coast Mountains at a point some 
twenty-five or thirty miles south of San Francisco, my route 
being the county road between the villages of San Mateo and 
Spanish Town, or Half Moon Bay. On the eastward slope, 
not far below the erystal springs reservoir, the road for some 
.distanee had lately been widened by the digging away of 
several feet more of the mountain slope on one side and de- 
positing it below on the opposite side. This improvement I` 
judge must have been made at some time within the last year. 
On the new embankment, which had thus been formed of 
soft disintegrating rock and reddish clay, some common plants 
were growing in more than ordinary luxuriance, this newly 
overturned earth being, as I suppose, especially well suited to 
the species which had thus early taken possession of it; and 
the first among them which drew my notice partieularly was 
a Gilia, one of the doubtful forms, or perhaps undescribed 
species belonging to the multicaulis group. Among its scat- 
SE OR MNA Ee re rue e T TE 
