ANTIRRHINUM SPECIOSUM. GAMBEL's SNAP-DRAGON. 63 



the Sierras at the head of the Sacramento valley. The trials and 

 sufferings he encountered on this route were terrible, and he 

 had scarcely reached the land of California when he was seized 

 with typhoid fever and died. A letter to the Philadelphia 

 "North American," in 1850, from one of his companions, says: 

 " He sleeps in peace beneath the towering pines which cluster 

 on a sunny hill-side, stretching up from the bright waters of the 

 Rio del Plumas. He has departed early, but not unhonored. 

 Philadelphia owes to his memory a lasting tribute of respect for 

 his science, virtue, worth, talent, and energy." The exact spot 

 wherein was laid all that was mortal of this promising young 

 explorer will now perhaps never be known ; and his lonely grave 

 in what was then the great Pacific wilderness seems sadly sug- 

 gestive of the lines of Bryant : 



" Take the wings 

 Of the morning, traverse Barca's desert sands, 

 Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 

 Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, 

 Save his own dashings — yet, the dead are there." 



Our very pretty wild flower seems confined to these small 

 islands along the Californian coast, and this fact has led to inter- 

 esting speculations as to the origin of this and some other species 

 so confined within such restricted limits. Guadalupe Island, 

 where Dr. Palmer found this plant, is only twenty-six miles north 

 and south, and only ten miles across on the widest line, with 

 volcanic rocks and extinct craters. Of the flowering plants Dr. 

 Palmer collected there, one-fifth have so far not been found in 

 any other part of the world ! Mr. Sereno Watson believes the 

 flora as of the same primordial origin as that of the mainland of 

 California, and that it shows that at some remote period there 

 were closer connections with California than now exist, but that 

 the land has been submerged, taking with the submergence whole 

 groups of families, and leaving here and there a few scattered 

 individuals of some species to tell us the tale of their comrades' 

 misfortunes. 



