120 



For many years previous to the time herein noted it was knowTi 

 only on the east side of the Apalachicola River in Gadsden and 

 Liberty Counties, Florida, from Chattahoochee to i\lum Bluff, 

 a distance of about tw^enty miles. (There have been unverified 

 rumors of its occurrence away from the ri\-er in Jackson and 

 Wakulla Counties.) Its usual habitat is shaded bluffs and 

 ravines, in the neighborhood of outcrops of the Chattahoochee 

 formation (an argillaceous limestone), and most of it is close 

 to the river, though some specimens have been seen a mile or 

 two up the valleys of tributary creeks. The locality oftenest 

 visited is near River Junction, a small place near the northern 

 edge of the state, which has had one railroad for over forty years, 

 and four for the last twelve years. On account of the restricted 

 range of the tree, some writers have imagined it to be on the 

 verge of extinction; but it is quite abundant yet, especially in 

 the vicinity of Aspalaga, where it was first discovered, and it 

 does not seem to be in any immediate danger. (Its near relative 

 Taxus Floridana, curiously enough, grows in the same region 

 and is much rarer, but somehow it has attracted very little 

 attention among botanists. The Tumion may have achieved 

 notoriety mainly through being named first for Dr. Torrey, and 

 having been made the object of a pilgrimage by Dr. Gray in 

 the days when it bore the name of Torrey a.) 



In August, 1903, while botanizing in extreme southwestern 

 Georgia, I remembered that this famous tree grew within a mile 

 or two of the Georgia line, and thought it would be a simple 

 matter to find it on the Georgia side, a matter which no one 

 apparently had made any special effort to do. So I went one 

 day to River Junction and had a native guide me to the nearest 

 colony of the tree, and after taking a good look at it I spent nearly 

 two days walking up along and near the river to Bainbridge; 

 but I saw no Tumion outside of the colony first shown to me. 

 In the light of subsequent developments it is now evident that 

 after crossing the state line I stayed in the alluvial bottoms of 

 the river too long, and did not turn out into the bluffs until I 



Int. Geog. Cong. 599. 1905; Sellards & Gunter, Ann. Rep. Fla. Geol. Surv. 2: 

 262. 1910; R. M. Harper, Bull. Torrej' Club 32: 149. 1905; Torreya 11 : 225- 

 226. 1911; Ann. Rep. Fla. Geol. Surv. 6: 212, 215, 354, 411, 412. 1914. 



