78 PITTONIA. 
from that in cultivation was obtained by Mr. Lyon on an islet 
rock lying off Santa Catalina Island. The tradition is that 
the cultivated plant came from Anacapa; but none of the 
men, and I haye met and conversed with a number who are 
more or less familiar with Anacapa, report having seen it 
there. The other specimens seen by me were three or four 
depressed and straggling bushes growing on an open slope 
fully exposed to the winds, at the very western end of San 
Miguel; and these although stunted by exposure were flower- 
ing and fruiting. 
This extremity of the island is separated from the rest by a 
long and narrow neck of sand ; it is in fact a separate islet at 
the highest tides; and at on an elevated situation just above 
the eastern end of the sandy isthmus I found impressive 
relies of the species as it flourished there in times past, 
namely, a few white petrified trunks standing above the sands, 
the larger of which were nearly a foot in diameter. These 
monumental trunks were quite fragile and of a calcareo- 
siliceous composition, the material which drifted upon and 
buried them, it may be while they were living trees, ultimately 
reducing them to their present state, being a mixture of sea- 
shell dust and sand, the former substance predominating. 
There is evidence that at least one other ligneous plant was 
abundant at a time not long past. There is not, even now, 
any great scarcity of good fuel, although the island has had 
resident occupants and has been resorted to by considerable 
parties of seal hunters and fishermen for twenty-five or thirty 
years past. But the tree which has furnished this supply is 
virtually extinet and indeed has been so during the whole 
period referred to. It is Rhus integrifolia. I saw two or 
three individuals still showing feeble signs of life, and these 
were at the east end of the island ; but all the higher middle 
portions, more especially on the north side, were once covered 
with the species in a low spreading form, such as it is wont to 
take on when growing in exposed situations along the main- 
land coast. I noted one of these insular skeleton trees, the 
wood of which was still hard and good, at least for fuel, whose 
