Botany 699 



ical publication of the Institution, in reality formed its last 

 quarto publication on a botanical subject. 



In 1849 the Institution contributed $150 toward defraying 

 the expenses of the botanist, Charles Wright, on an ex- 

 pedition to El Paso, Texas, and in 1852 appeared the first 

 contribution to phaenogamic knowledge, entitled " Plantae 

 Wrightianae Texano-Neo-Mexicanae," containing a description 

 by Gray of the plants collected by Wright, together with many 

 of those collected by Wislizenus in the valley of the Rio 

 Grande and Chihuahua, and by Doctor Gregg in the same 

 district and the northern part of Mexico. A second part of 

 the " Plantar Wrightianae " appeared the following year, both 

 parts with illustrations by Mr. Sprague. In rapid succession 

 appeared three other " Contributions to Knowledge" by Profes- 

 sor John Torrey. It had been hoped that arrangements would 

 be made by the government for publishing a general account 

 of the botany of California, including the plants collected by 

 Fremont on his different expeditions from 1842 to 1848, but 

 there being no immediate prospect of such a work, Professor 

 Torrey published in 1854, in the sixth volume of the "Con- 

 tributions to Knowledge," a monograph entitled "Plantae Fre- 

 montianae," in which he gave an account of twelve of the most 

 characteristic genera and species collected by Fremont in 

 California, including the new genera Spraguea, Fremontia, 

 Coleogyne, Emplectocladus, Carpenteria, and Sarcodes, the 

 type of the latter being the then remarkable but now familiar 

 snow-plant of the Sierras, S. sanguined. 



In the same volume are two other important papers by 

 Torrey. In the first, " Observations on the Batis maritima 

 of Linnaeus," he gave the first full account of this anomalous 

 species, which is widely diffused in the West Indies and 

 South America, and placed it in a new order which he con- 

 sidered related to Empetraceae. Although the genus was 



