56 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
NOTES ON THE FAUNA AND FLORA OF 
CATALINA ISLAND. 
By C. F. Baker. 
(Read before Section of Botany, April 18, 1905.) 
During March of 1904, my wife and I had an unexpected 
opportunity to do a half day’s collecting at Avalon, on Catalina 
Island. We did not collect with any idea of making a contri- 
bution to the knowledge of the fauna and flora of the Island, 
but rather as a matter of habit and for our own pleasure. The 
fact that Avalon is a great summer resort and often visited by 
zoologists and botanists, seemed to render it very unlikely 
that we should find anything of unusual interest or unknown. 
However, as the results are gathered together they form a 
contribution of wholly unexpected interest and importance. 
Our collecting was all done within the immediate outskirts 
of the town. Starting from the hotel early in the morning, 
we climbed the hill by the church, thence up a little gulch 
and out on to the hilltop; from here we passed down a larger 
gulch on the other side, through the golf links, and some dis- 
tance up a large wash across the valley; lunch time having ar- 
rived we returned to the hotel; after lunch, until steamer time 
we walked along the rocky beach on the north side of the bay. 
It was early March and the surrounding country looked very 
bare—sandy hills covered with a few bushes and much eactus 
—cut by many deep gulches, along the bottoms and south sides 
of which were some shrubs and grasses still green. 
We gathered a number of lichens, which, although of very 
unusual interest, added nothing to Dr. Hasse’s records. Splen- 
did collections might readily be made of the lichens at this 
point, for they are abundant in species and specimens. It was 
too early for flowering plants, but their dead twigs furnished 
a number of interesting fungi. The proportion of new species 
would indicate a characteristic fungus flora for the Island, 
and undoubtedly a rich harvest awaits the thorough collector. 
Under boards and stones occurred a great variety of animal 
life, from snakes, lizards, and salamanders down to ‘Thy- 
sanurans, mollusks and worms. It will be impossible at the 
present time to enumerate all the species taken, since they 
are not yet all worked up. The spiders furnished a new genus 
and species and the ants several new forms. The Island seems 
to have a remarkable ant and spider fauna, and evidently a 
careful gathering of the species will yield rich returns. 
On the shore after lunch, we reveled in crustaceans, collect- - 
ing numerous Amphipods, Isopods, hermit crabs, ete. Deep 
in the sand underneath boulders, low down on the beach, we 
