20 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



ing about San Diego Bay in a sailor's pea-jacket, 

 with a wide straw hat and bare feet with his 

 trousers rolled up to his knees, picking up stones 

 and shells." The sailors considered him something 

 of a joke, calling him "Old Curious," and believed 

 him rather out of his mind; but he knew his busi- 

 ness, and his few weeks' stay in California led to 

 the discovery of a large number of plants of which 

 the world had been in ignorance before that. His 

 name is enshrined in Nuttallia cerasiformis, a 

 charming plumlike shrub of the Coast Eange, and 

 in California's beautiful tree-dogwood, Cornus 

 Nuttallii, besides many another species of interest 

 more to botanists than the laity. 



Under the Spanish and Mexican regimes, Cali- 

 fornia was always wild, save in so far as there was 

 cultivation close to the Franciscan missionary 

 establishments. With the coming of the country 

 under American domination, the usual change set 

 in that follows the plow the world over, though it 

 was not until the transcontinental railways linked 

 the Pacific with the Atlantic that the curtain ac- 

 tually rang down on California pastoral, and the 

 State's modern epoch was born. The preliminary 

 surveys for the Pacific railways were numerous and 

 began in the 1850 's. Each surveying party was 

 accompanied by a naturalist or two, whose names as 



