DESCRIPTIONS 



S M K NEW PLAN T S 



COLLECTED BY 



COLONEL J. C. FREMONT, IN CALIFORNIA.* 



The important services rendered to science by that distinguished traveller, 

 Colonel Fremont, are knovpn to all who have read the reports of his hazardous 

 journeys. He has not only made valuable additions to the geographical knowledge 

 of our remote possessions, but has greatly increased our acquaintance with the 

 geology and natural history of the regions which he explored. His First Expedition 

 was made in the year 1842, and terminated at the Rocky Mountains. He 

 examined the celebrated South Pass, and ascended the highest mountain of the 

 Wind River Chain, now called Fremont's Peak. The party moved so rapidly 

 (travelling from the frontier of Missouri to the Mountains and returning in the 

 short space of four months) that much time could not be given to botany. 

 Nevertheless, a collection of 350 species of plants was made, of which I gave an 

 account in a Botanical Appendix to his first Report. The Second Expedition of 

 Colonel Fremont, that of 1843 and 1844, embraced not only much of the ground 

 which he had previously explored, but extensive regions of Oregon and California. 

 In this journey, he made large collections in places never before visited by a 

 botanist ; but, unfortunately, a great portion of them was lost. In the gorges of 

 the Sierra Nevada, a mule loaded with some bales of botanical specimens gathered 

 in a thousand miles of travel, fell from a precipice into a deep chasm, from whence 

 they could not be recovered. A large part of the remaining collection was 

 destroyed, on the return of the Expedition, by the great flood of the Kansas river. 

 Some of the new and more interesting plants that were rescued from destruc- 

 tion, were published in the Botanical Appendix to Colonel Fremont's Report of 

 his Second Expedition. 



* An Abstract of this memoir was read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 at its meeting held in New Haven, August, 1850, and published in the volume of its Preeeedings. 



