i 



April i yth, and from May 28th to June 9th. The part explored was a 

 narrow strip along the shore, from the mouth of the Nueces River to 

 Flower Bluff, a distance of twenty-five miles. One day was spent in 

 San Patricio county, across the bay from Corpus Christi. Away from 

 the immediate vicinity of the bay the country is too inaccessible on ac- 

 count of the chapparral, and does not contain enough moisture to make 

 good collecting ground, although it might if there were not several head 

 of cattle to every plant which ventures above ground. 



The bulk of the collecting was done in and about the town. Two trips 

 were made to the mouth of the Nueces along Nueces Bay, two to the 

 Oso, and one to Flower Bluff. 



When I arrived there early in March, plants were plentiful and bloom- 

 ing profusely after the slight winter rains. During the last week of 

 March a " norther" came down, followed by another in a few days, 

 when, as if by magic, the plants began to droop, the flowers to disappear, 

 and on some of the pasture land scarcely a sprig of green could be seen 

 nothing but the brown, bare earth. 



The most prominent herbaceous plants on the plateau in early spring 

 were Lesquerella Gordoni and a species of CEnothera as lately received, 

 apparently close to (E. primiveris. Of shrubs, the most common were 

 Prosopis juliflora, Castela Nicholsoni, Celtis pallida, Zizyphus obtusi- 

 folia, Acacia amentacea, A. tortuosa and Culubrina Texensis. 



On April iyth I moved to Kerrville, 71 miles northwest of San An- 

 tonio, and about 280 from Corpus Christi. It is a small town of perhaps 

 1000 inhabitants, situated on the headwaters of the Guadalupe, at an 

 elevation of 1650 feet above sea level, and is one of the health resorts of 

 Texas. It is situated in a limestone formation and surrounded by hills, 

 the highest of which are about 2000 feet above sea level. Occasionally 

 one of these hills is isolated and cone-shaped, like the buttes of the Bad 

 Lands in the Dakotas. They are likewise terraced, a wall of rock two 

 or three feet high completely encircling the hill ; above this a bench of 

 earth, then another rock wall, and so on to the summit, the intervals be- 

 tween the benches becoming less as one ascends. 



At the northwestern end of the town, the Guadalupe receives a small 

 tributary called Town Creek. My explorations here were confined to 

 the immediate vicinity of Kerrville, along the banks of the Guadalupe for 

 a distance of about two miles, along the banks of Town Creek for about a 

 mile, and the surrounding hills, principally those on the left bank of the 

 river, and at a distance of about a mile from the town. One day was 

 spent along Bear Creek, in the extreme northeastern part of the county, 

 one trip made to a point on Wolf Creek, about fourteen miles north of 



