A PILGRIMAGE TO TOR RE Y A. 193 



British Museum, in the winter of 1838-9, and then identified 

 the genus. There is likewise in Japan a second Croomia, 

 very probably in company with the Torreya. A third Tor- 

 reya inhabits California, but it has no associate Croomia. 



I have formerly treated of the peculiar distribution of these 

 genera and species between the United States and Japan, 

 have collocated a large number of equally striking similar 

 instances, and have offered certain speculations in explanation 

 of them. The views maintained have been more and more 

 confirmed, and are now adopted by the leading philosophical 

 botanists. 



The few hours devoted to this first search for Torreya, 

 pleasant as they were, yet were too scantily rewarded to 

 satiate my interest. I saw no tree with trunk over six inches 

 in diameter, and found no female blossoms. It was necessary 

 to hasten back to the railway car, to await the expected sum- 

 mons to the steamboat. I bore with me, besides my botani- 

 cal specimens, a stick of Torreya, suitable for a staff, which 

 I propose to make over to the President of the Torrey Botani- 

 cal Club, for the official baton. Before long the whistle of 

 the steamboat announced its approach to the landing, and 

 offered us a prospect of a much-needed dinner ; the water 

 had fallen sufficiently to allow us to be conveyed to the wharf 

 upon a hand-car, and so we embarked for Apalachicola via 

 Bainbridge. That is, we went up the Flint River about forty 

 miles and thence back in the night, past the place of em- 

 barkation. 



I will not here give any account of a delightful ten days' 

 episode, beginning with the voyage down the brimming river, 

 bordered with almost unbroken green of every tint, from the 

 dark background of Long-leaved Pines to the tender new 

 verdure of the Liquidambar and other deciduous trees in their 

 freshest development, interspersed with the deep and lustrous 

 hue of Magnolia grandiflora, and, when the banks were low, 

 dominated by weird, naked trunks of Southern Cypress (Taxo- 

 dium), their branches hung with long tufts and streamers of 

 the gray and sombre Southern Moss (Tillandsia) below, while 

 above they were just putting forth their delicate foliage. 



