276 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



and feet of the birds, and finding a cool, moist, shady sit- 

 uation, would soon grow and flourish. Above the springs 

 stretched a far-reaching mesa through which the rocky 

 wash of Butler Creek extended. On the bare sandstone 

 above, black, polished, flattened, rounded boulders had 

 worked depressions for themselves in the sandstone from 

 which no flood could dislodge them. These stones were 

 entirely different from any rocks in the immediate neigh- 

 borhood or any seen elsewhere on the trip. They 

 looked more like relics of a glacier than anything else. 



That night we rode through Butler Canon in the dusk, 

 and camped after dark on the banks of the San Juan, 

 just above where the gorge begins. A dense thicket of 

 Cleome integrifolia, more than six feet high, had to be 

 pulled up so as to form a camping place. The odor of 

 the Cleome and Datura metehides, which also grew rank 

 in the same spot, made the atmosphere almost unendura- 

 ble. On the return we camped at Butler Spring, and 

 some interesting plants were found in the canon below 

 and on the wash above. J^uercus Gambellii and J^. un- 

 dulata both grew in the canon, the latter easily distin- 

 guishable by its blue-green foliage. Rosa Fen dleri was 

 abundant. These shrubs were apparently confined to 

 that canon. On the boulder -covered wash above, Tali 

 1111m brachypodium thrust down its fleshy roots between 

 the stones; Houstonia saxicola was rare. On the mesa 

 Helianthus fteliolaris canescens was common as well as 

 the new Eriogonum ramosissimum described later. The 

 abundance of Hilaria yamesii on these mesas gave our 

 poor animals assurance of a good night's pasturage. 



July 13, we rode in the early morning to the mesa 

 above the river, and from there on to Willow Creek, it 

 was a continuous ride all day, over hills, crossing the 

 sandy wastes of Epsom Creek, riding between the foot 



