IN CALIFORNIA 13 



plement, botanists have discovered a number of rare 

 plant forms common to the mainland coast and to 

 those islands that stretch like peaks of some out- 

 lying submarine mountain range from Santa Bar- 

 bara to Coronado. The trend of evidence is that 

 in some former age the California mainland ex- 

 tended westward to that chain of islands; that a 

 subsidence later of the extensive area between the 

 islands and the present coast line, carried down with 

 it a vast multitude of trees and plants; and a few 

 remnants have to this day clung upon the outskirts 

 of the submerged territory. It is safe to assume 

 that our three lone conifers are of these remnants 

 like Wordsworth's Lady of the Mere, 



"Sole sitting by the shores of old romance/' 



Madrono and Laurel Silvestre 



Traveling through northern California, whether 

 by train or motor-car or more primitive mode, you 

 can hardly fail to notice in the forest now and then 

 the presence of tall, slender trees, with remarkably 

 smooth, red branches and glossy foliage that sug- 

 gest magnolias. They are the tree which Cali- 

 fornians are disposed to call the madrone, a slur- 

 ring of the Spanish madrono, a word which people 

 interested in the purity of language dislike to hear 

 mutilated. Like the subject of Halleck's famous 



