HISTORICAL NOTES OF SOME CALIFOENIAN TREES. -45 



E 



definiteness; though the trees had certainly been observed 

 by Europeans and remarked upon somewhat earlier. 



Captain Vancouver, who was at the port of San Francisco 

 in November, 1792, v;rote as follows, in his diary for the 17th 

 of that month: "A tent was pitched on the shore; wells 

 were dug for obtaining water, and a party was employed in 

 procuring f ael from small bushy holly-leaved oaks, the only 

 trees fit for our purpose. A lagoon of sea-water was between 

 the beach and the spot on wliich these trees grew, which 

 rendered the conveying the wood when cut a very laborious 

 operation." 



Q 



agri folia 



other 



oak that could be described as having the foliage of the 

 holly is or ever has been found on any part of the San Fran- 

 cisco peninsula; and, inasmuch as Vancouver's journal was 

 published in London in 1798, as a published allusion to this 

 species, this antedates by three years the more formally diag- 

 nostic account given by Nee who was, to use the conventional 

 phrase, the author of the species. It is also to be noted that 

 Vancouver, in crossing the country from the Mission Dolores 

 to Santa Clara, observed that, on the plains last named, "the 

 holly-leaved oaks," to give his own words, "were increased 

 from dwarf shrubs to trees of tolerable size." 



Both these allusions are to this species; for although a 

 similar oak, with evergreen and prickly-edged foliage, but 

 specifically very distinct— I refer to Q. WisUzeni— is abun- 

 dant in the interior of the State, it does not reach the narrow 

 strip of seaboard country inspected by Vancouver, and so can 

 not have been seen by him. And this fine species, superior 

 to Q. agrifolia in shapeliness and in the quality of the wood 

 did not become known in the botanical world as a distinct 



species, until as late as 1864. 



It is not improbable that the wood of Q. agrifolia may 

 have been carried to the shores of Britain as early as the her- 

 barium specimens of its leaves and acorns were deposited by 

 the Spanish botanist at the Koyal Gardens in Madrid; for 



