74 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



of wild music. Eytel had his paint box out and was 

 making color notes. 



"Isn't that alone worth the price of admission?" 

 observed the Professor complacently. 



"What is it?" I asked, and my awestruck tone 

 must have sounded as if I thought myself in a 

 sanctuary. 



The Professor's preciseness of reply was jarring. 



"Parkinsonia Torreyana is the old-fashioned 

 name, but the modern iconoclasts who are un- 

 happy if not smashing the old botanical nomencla- 

 ture, insist on calling it Cercidium Torreyanum. 

 Everybody on the desert calls it palo verde. That 's 

 Spanish for green tree, and a good honest name, 

 for it is green, bark and all. Isn't it a glorious 

 posy? You would find it if you traveled east all 

 along the way into Arizona ; and down through the 

 Sonoran Desert of old Mexico and in the arid 

 peninsula of Lower California it follows you like the 

 providence of God." 



Here a temporary diversion in our Jornada was 

 occasioned by the necessity of a search for our 

 philosophical pack horse, which had taken advantage 

 of our preoccupation to vanish from sight. He was 

 trailed, however, by his broken tie-rope and event- 

 ually captured, poetically browsing on a flowery 

 patch of pink sand verbena, his pack slipped beneath 



