IN CALIFORNIA 15 



Douglas's request to explore the interior of the 

 province was so fraught with suspicion to the Mexi- 

 can authorities that nearly six months were wasted 

 in this land of manana, before permission was se- 

 cured to extend his excursions inland. This exas- 

 perating delay, however, enabled Douglas to make 

 thorough examination of the country within easy 

 access of Monterey, and carried him to the spring 

 months when the California countryside attains the 

 full glory of wild bloom. His collections far out- 

 numbered all that all his predecessors had taken 

 home and amounted to a revelation, including as 

 they did numerous genera of plants never before 

 known to science and hundreds of species. The 

 first flower he took in hand, he tells us, "was the 

 beautiful wild gooseberry (Ribes speciosum), a 

 flower not surpassed in beauty by the finest fuch- 

 sia;" 4 though another had found this before him. 

 The same day, however, did bring a brand new dis- 

 covery in the shape of a little herbaceous annual 

 destined to become one of the best beloved of Euro- 

 pean garden flowers, Nemophila insignis. "A 

 humble but lovely plant the harbinger of the Cali- 

 fornia spring," Douglas thought it. This is the 

 charming wilding known to every California flower 

 lover as Baby-Blue-Eyes. 



* Which it resembles. 



