IN CALIFORNIA 101 



might perfectly well be conserved that is now being 

 ruthlessly despoiled, if the despoilers' eyes could 

 only be opened to the beauty in their path. ' ' 



As we took the homeward trail, later in the day, 

 the Professor started up again on gardening. 



"Do you know," he remarked, ''that before Cali- 

 fornia was discovered as a floral paradise, gardens 

 were almost deficient in one of their present-day 

 strong points that is, the annuals? The garden 

 of a century ago was strong in perennial plants, but 

 it pretty much stopped at that. The value of an- 

 nuals in horticultural effect was first realized when 

 the Eoyal Horticultural Society of London sowed 

 the seeds of the scores of beautiful annuals which 

 their collector, David Douglas, back in the 1830 's, 

 brought them from California. 2 Of course I don't 

 mean that all garden annuals now are California 

 species, though many of them are, but those collec- 

 tions of Douglas's revolutionized garden arrange- 

 ment, and had the effect of drawing attention to a 

 whole world of beauty, until then practically neg- 

 lected in gardens. Douglas was followed in Cali- 

 fornia by other collectors for European plant 

 dealers, and now if you pay a visit to foreign gar- 



2 Any reader inclined to doubt the Professor's statements, is re- 

 ferred to Thomas Median's "The Native Flowers and Ferns of the 

 United States," Series II, Volume II, p. 101. 



