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recent years, Ralph Hoffmann, Director of the Santa Barbara 

 Museum, made very extensive collections on all the northern 

 islands. His herbarium, beautifully mounted and carefully 

 named (with the assistance of various specialists) is in the 

 Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. 



Hoffmann published a list of numerous additions to the 

 island floras, and would have dealt with the whole subject in a 

 comprehensive manner, but for his lamentable death on San 

 Miguel Island on July 21, 1932. He was climbing a cliff in the 

 effort to obtain specimens of a Dudleya (or Echeveria) which he 

 thought might prove new. A small pick which he used in climb- 

 ing broke, and this apparently caused him to fall, his death 

 being instantaneous. Hoffmann was an excellent ornithologist 

 as well as botanist, a man whose loss we can never cease to 

 lament. 



The southern islands have been visited by many botanists, 

 especially of course Santa Catalina which is a famous tourist 

 resort, and is easily reached. C. F. Millspaugh and L. W. 

 Nuttall have published a Flora of Santa Catalina Island 

 (1923), which is very comprehensive, including not only 

 the flowering plants and ferns, but the mosses (28 species), 

 the Hepaticae (8 species), the lichens (167 species and 

 varieties), the fungi (203 species) and the Mycetozoa (8 

 species). Twenty nine species of fungi are described as 

 new, but it is very likely that none is a true endemic. Several 

 occur on cultivated or introduced plants. Including varie- 

 ties (races), the recorded flowering plants and ferns of the 

 eight islands collectively appears to number about 750. It may 

 perhaps be surmised that there are actually about 900 distinct 

 forms.* Hoffmann's island herbarium (from the northern islands 

 only) numbers 620. Of the approximately or nearly 90 endemics, 

 about one third are found on both the northern and southern 

 islands, one third on the northern group only, and one third on 

 the southern. But it must be added that there are eleven island 

 endemics which also live far to the south, on Guadalupe 

 Island, which is out on the Pacific 135 miles S.VV. from Point 

 San Antonio, Lower California. One of the island plants, Pinus 

 remorata, is also found on Cedros Island, near the coast of Lower 

 California. It is also reported as occurring in the Pleistocene of 



* I can add one to the recorded list; the grass Distichlis dentata Rydberg 

 (det. by Mrs. Chase), which I obtained on San Miguel. 



