BOTANICAL COLLECTIONS IN CALIFORNIA. 555 



described in the supplement to the " Botany of Captain Beechey's Voyage," and those from Ore- 

 gon and Washington Territory in Hooker's "Flora Boreali- Americana." Hooker's, Lindley's 

 and Bentham's herbaria contain sets of his Californian plants, and many specimens are found 

 elsewhere. 



Dr. THOMAS COULTER, who collected in Mexico for many years, reached Monterey in Novem- 

 ber, 1831, and remained in Upper California until late in 1832 or possibly even longer (he was 

 nearly three years in California according to Don), during which time he visited " all the 

 habitable parts " of the country. The most notable of his excursions was one to the Colorado 

 Kiver in 1832. He left Monterey late in March, was at San Gabriel April 23, and at the ford 

 of the Colorado River, just below the mouth of the Gila, May 8. He returned by the sai.ie 

 route and was again at Monterey July 19. He was the first botanist to reach, the interesting 

 Colorado desert and Gila regions, and some of his species were not again found until very many 

 years after. He collected more than a thousand species in Mexico and California ; but they 

 remained mostly undistributed and unknown until after the collector's death and the appointment 

 of the late Prof. W. H. Harvey as curator of the herbarium of Trinity College, Dublin, which at 

 that time, or previously, came into possession of them. Dr. Harvey published several interesting 

 Californian genera and species, and distributed the duplicates of the collection, the fullest set to 

 the Hookerian Herbarium, and portions to the herbaria of Gray and of Torrey. The geographical 

 results of his Californian explorations are published in a paper in the Journal of the Royal 

 Geographical Society of London (1835), v. 59-70, with a map. 



FERDINAND DEPPE, of Berlin (whose name is associated with that of Dr. Scheide in Mexico), 

 visited California in 1831 or 1832. But his name is rarely met with in connection with Cali- 

 fornian botany. 



Several Californian species were described, by or before 1834, as having been collected by Mr. 

 P. E. BOTTA, but I have no more definite information as to when or where he collected here. 

 He was a travelling naturalist, collecting for the Museum of Natural History of Paris. 



THOMAS NUTTALL crossed the continent in an expedition under Captain Wyeth, in 1834, to the 

 Columbia River. Thence he went to the Sandwich Islands, and returned to California, where 

 he collected during a part of the year 1835, mostly near the coast, from San Francisco to San 

 Diego. His collections were very rich, and contained the types of many new species. Some of 

 them are in the Gray Herbarium at Harvard University, and many in the herbarium of the Acad- 

 emy of Sciences at Philadelphia. They are also at Kew, and the original set was purchased by 

 the British Museum after Nuttall's death. Descriptions appeared in various places, many being 

 published in Torrey and Gray's Flora of North America ; the new Composite were described by 

 himself in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1841. 



RICHARD BRINSLF.Y HINDS, surgeon on board the English surveying-ship Sulphur, under 

 Captain Sir Edward Belcher, visited the State in the autumn of 1837, and went up the Sacra- 

 mento River for some distance. In October and November, 1839, the expedition again touched 

 the coast, and collections '.vere made at San Diego, but chiefly southward at various points in 

 Lower California, where no botanists had previously been. Some of these collections were made 

 by Mr. BARCLAY, a collector sent out by the Royal Garden of Kew. The results were published in 

 the " Botany of the Voyage of H. M. S. Sulphur," by Hinds and Bentham. 



Dr. WOSNESSEN.SKY was sent, by the Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg and the Zoological 

 Museum of that place, to the North Pacific, and spent ten years on the coast. He spent some 

 time collecting in California, but when he first came, how often or how long here, or how exten- 

 sive his botanical collections were, 1 do not know. lie was on Mount St. Helena June 12, 1841, 

 which is the only date I have of his visit. 



WILLIAM D. BRACKENRIDGE and Dr. CHARLES PICKERING, connected with the United States 

 Exploring Expedition under Lieutenant Wilkes, visited California in 1841. They entered the 

 State by land from Oregon, passed by the western base of Mount Shasta and down the Sacra- 

 mento Valley to the Bay. Their Californian collection was small, but contained some very inter- 

 esting species, an account of which was given by Dr. Torrey in the Botany of the Expedition. 



M. DUFLOT DE MOFRAS, who was sent by the French government on an expedition to the 

 west coast of North America in 1840 to 1842, was in California in 1841. How much he col- 

 lected in this State it is not easy to say ; but in an Appendix to his "Explorations du Terri- 

 toire de Oregon des Californies, " etc. (Paris, 1844), ii. 403, there is a catalogue of the principal 

 plants of the Northwest Coast, which enumerates about two hundred and ninety species, without 

 even the usual specific authorities, and with so many errors of one kind or another as to be of little 

 scientific value. 



