232 THE BOTANISTS OF PHILADELPHIA. 



Philadelphia. The published account of, his travels, entitled 

 " Description of Plants collected by William Gambel, M. D., 

 in the Rocky Mountains and Upper California," by Thomas 

 Nuttall, appeared in the Journal of the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences, 2d ser., 1 : 149 (1847-50). In this paper Gambel's 

 name is perpetuated in a scrophulariaceous plant, Gambelia 

 speciosa,"^ a figure of this plant with description being pub- 

 lished. Returning to Philadelphia the following year, he 

 entered the Medical School of the University of Pennsyl- 

 vania, from which he graduated in 1848. He was made 

 Recording Secretary of the Philadelphia Academy, but 

 resigned from this position the following year to accompany a 

 party organized by I. J. Wistar to cross the continent to the 

 California gold fields. The leader, Isaac J. Wistar, became 

 afterward a distinguished officer in the Union army, a 

 philanthropist and President of the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences. The party started from Independence, Missouri, 

 about the first of May, and traveled up the Platte River, where 

 Gambel left to join a party of Missourians, led by Captain 

 Boone, of Kentucky. Gambel's fate is described in the 

 following extract of a letter from General Wistar to Professor 

 Sargent : " In the year 1850, I met two men of Boone's 

 train at Foster's Bar, who gave me the first information 

 I had received of the fate of the majority of the overland 

 party. Being well furnished and provisioned, and mostly 

 older men than me, they traveled leisurely and reached 

 the Sierras only in October. After the loss of most of their 

 cattle and consequent abandonment of many w^agons in the 

 Humboldt Desert, they were caught by snow in the moun- 

 tains, and instead of abandoning the remainder and pushing 



* See Meehan. Native ferns and flowers of the United States, ser. 2, II : 62. 



