185 
EARLY SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITIONS TO 
CALIFORNIA.—I. 
By Wits L. Jepson. 
It has been generally accepted that the first botanists to 
visit California were Thaddseus Henke and Luis Nee who 
came with the Spanish scientific expedition under Malaspina. 
That this should have been so accepted seems easy and 
natural. Spanish navigators on their voyages of adventure 
and discovery were the first to touch these remote coasts; 
Spanish exploring parties bent on conquest and in search of 
fabled treasure were the first to enter Alta California; the 
Franciscans, advancing along the Pacific shore from Mexico, 
left the monuments of their zeal as far northward as the 
frontier missions of San Rafael and Sonoma. 
But notwithstanding the dominating influence of Spain in 
Mexico and in the wide area to which the name California 
was applied, I discover what does not seem to be at all known, 
particularly to American botanists, that the first scientific 
expedition to visit the Pacific Coast was not that of Malaspina 
and that the first botanists to make a botanical collection 
within the borders of California were not those of the 
scientific corps of the famous navigator. 
The only general account of botanists and botanical 
explorations in California is an annotated list by W. H 
Brewer in the second volume of the Botany of the California 
Geological Survey. He places the arrival of the earliest 
botanists in 1791 in the persons of Thaddeus Henke and 
Luis Nee. Neither is one likely to find elsewhere in botanical 
literature an account of an earlier visit. No flora or botany 
of California, nor monograph or paper dealing more or less 
exclusively with Californian plants credits any collector 
earlier than Henke. 
I shall therefore proceed to give an account of the visit of 
an earlier expedition, the circumstances under which it was 
made, and the incidents and length of its stay. For, from 
the date of its arrival, begins the botanical history of 
