December 19, 1888.] 



Garden and Forest. 



507 



Nothing more was seen of Shortia for a long time, 

 although no botanist ever visited tlae mountains of Caro- 

 lina (and the number after 1866 was considerable), witliout 

 carrying a special commission from Cambridge to bring bade 

 a specimen of Micliaux's little plant, in which Dr. Gray's inter- 

 est became stronger than ever when, in studying in 1858 a 

 collection of Maximowicz's Japanese plants, he recognized 

 in that botanist's Scizocodon ttnifloriis another species of 

 Shortia almost identical with the Carolina plant. The Japan- 

 ese specimens, curiously enough, were in the same condi- 

 tion — that is, although the calyx and pistil of the flower were 

 preserved, there was no trace of either corolla or stamens. 



These specimens, while they confirmed the validity of the 

 genus, threw no light upon the Carolina plant, which bot- 

 anists now hunted for more assiduously than ever. The 

 keenest-eyed plant-hunters looked for it in vain year after 

 year in ail the region in which Michaux was supposed to 

 have traveled ; and the search was almost given up as hope- 

 less, when in May, 1877, Shortia was found accidentally by a 

 youth, G. M. Hyams, upon the banks of the Catawba River, 

 near the town of Marion, in McDowell County, North Caro- 

 lina, at a considerable distance from the high mountains to 

 which Michaux's label assig'ned the plant. The new speci- 

 men fell into the hands of the young man's father, a pro- 

 fessed herbalist. His knowledge of botany, however, was 

 not great; and it was not until the following year that he dis- 

 covered, with the aid of a correspondent, what a treasure he 

 had. 



These new specimens made when the plant was in flower 

 confirmed at once Professor Gray's original ideas of tlie 

 proper relationship of his genus, and enabled him to com- 

 plete its characters and remodel the family to which it be- 

 longed.* 



There seemed to be nothing more left to say about Shortia. 

 It was figured and described and discussed, and even intro- 

 duced sparingly into cultivation, although its stay in gardens 

 was a short one ; while the enterprising discoverer reaped a 

 rich harvest during a year or two by selling plants (and, it is 

 to be feared, by exterminating them) for herbarium specimens, 

 at extravagant prices. Professor Gray, however, clung to the 

 belief that Michaux's label could be depended upon, and that 

 the real home of Shortia was in the high mountains. He 

 regarded the station upon the Catawba as an outlying post, 

 to which he suggested the plant might have been washed 

 down, and still believed that it was to be found about the 

 head-waters of the streams flowing eastward from the high 

 Black Mountain range. This region was again carefully ex- 

 amined, but without result, and the search for Shortia was 

 practically abandoned. 



There is still, however, another short chapter to relate in 

 the history of this little plant. I visited, two years ago, in 

 the autumn of 1886, the mountain region of North and South 

 Carolina, which lies about the head-waters of the Keowee 

 River, the great eastern fork of the Savannah, for the purpose 

 of gaining, if possible, some insight into the origin of Mag- 

 nolia cordata, a species which was first described in Michaux's 

 North American Flora, but had not been seen anywhere 

 growing wild during the present century, although pre- 

 served and generally disseminated in gardens. Michaux left 

 Augusta, Georgia, towards the end of November, 1788, for 

 the purpose of securing a supply of roots of what he called 

 at that time Magnolia cordata. This was not, as I was after- 

 wards able to show,f the Magnolia cordata of the Flora, 

 founded long afterwards in Paris by Richard upon a specimen 

 of M. acuminata, but the M. Fraseri, a species which had 

 been discovered a few years earlier by the younger Bar- 

 tram, the tirst botanist who explored the Carolina moun- 

 tains. Michaux, in spite of a serious attack of fever, 

 reached the head-waters of the Keowee on the 9th of Decem- 

 ber, and although weakened by sickness and hunger, and 

 seriously impeded by the intense cold which he encountered 

 in this elevated region, proceeded to explore the neighboring 

 high mountains in search of a supply of young Magnolia 

 trees for his Charleston nurseries. On the day of his arrival 

 he noted in his journal that he had discovered what he called a 

 " Nouvel Arbuste a. f. denieles rampant siir la Montagne." I 

 had taken occasion before undertaking this journey to examine 

 the manuscript diary kept by Michaux during his stay in Amer- 

 ica, preserved in the Ubrary of the American Philosophical 

 Society ; and I had noted the directions he had written down 

 with much detail for finding his "Arbuste " — which evidently had 

 interested him, as it is the only plant which he mentioned in 



*Asa Gray in Attierican yournal 0/ Science, 3 ser. xvi., 483: Anuales Sci. Nat., 6 

 ser. vii., 171, i. 15. 



^American JoHTTial 0/ Science, 3 ser. xxxii., 1160. 



the whole diary in this way— in the hope of identifying his 

 plant, which, as this region had not been visited again by any 

 botanist, miglit prove something new, or at least imperfectly 

 known. The idea that the plant might be Shortia was hardly 

 entei'tained. It did not seem possible that Michaux, un- 

 der any circumstances, could have mistaken Shortia for a 

 shrub ; and Dr. Gray, who had examined the diary either just 

 before or immediately after his first journey to Carolina, if he 

 noticed this entry at all, certainly never associated it in anv 

 way with the plant which he wanted to find more than all 

 others. Had he done so he would have visited, or sent some 

 of his correspondents to visit, the head-watersof the Savannah, 

 a region which, for some reason, never attracted his attention, 

 although it was by this route, following the old Indian trail 

 from the coast to the Cherokee country, that all the early 

 botanists penetrated to the mountains. 



It was possible, with the aid of the journal, to find, without 

 much trouble, the spot where Michaux had camped in Decem- 

 ber, 1788, and to trace his footsteps upon the different excur- 

 sions which he made into the mountains from this camp. 

 The two torrents which he described, as descending in a 

 rough and tumultuous course from the high mountains to 

 form the Keowee, are now known as the Toxoway and the 

 Horse-pasture. The little fertile plain which Michaux found 

 at the junction of these two streams still exists, as does the foot- 

 path, since trodden by the feet of many moonshiners, which 

 led from the right bank of the river a hundred paces below the 

 junction of the two streams into the mountain facing the 

 north. It was by the side of this path that i\Iichaux, just loo 

 years ago this month, discovered his "Arbuste," with den- 

 ticulate leaves, and here, ninety-eight years later, I found 

 Shortia. 



The evidence seems conclusive that the two plants are one 

 and the same, or, if it was not in this exact locality that 

 Michaux gathered the specimen preserved in the Paris 

 Museum, it was in this immediate neighborhood, where 

 Shortia is now known through the subsequent explorations 

 of Mr. F. H. Boynton, of Highlands, North Carolina, to be 

 abundant. 



Mr. Faxon's drawingshows so clearly the habit and structure 

 of Shortia, which, moreover, has been frequently described 

 in purely technical journals of botany, that nothing further 

 upon these subjects need be written now. Its nearest Ameri- 

 can allies are Galax aphylla, a beautiful evergreen herb, with 

 tall, erect racemes of small pure white flowers, peculiar to the 

 wooded slopes of the southern Alleghany Mountains, and the 

 familiar Pixie {PixidantJiera barbata) of the New Jersey Pine 

 barrens. There is in Japan one species of Shortia (.?. tiniflorci), 

 and possibly two, as there exists a rude portrait in an old work 

 upon Japanese botany, in which what is evidently another spe- 

 cies of Shortia, almost identical with the American plant, is rep- 

 resented. In Japan, too, are two species of the nearly related 

 Schizocodon, while in Thibet occurs Berneuxia, of the same 

 family of Diapensiacea, of which the type is Diapensia, with 

 two species, one widely distributed in boreal regions and the 

 other confined to the Himalayas. C. S. S. 



Plan of the Leland Stanford, Jr., University. 



SENATOR STANFORD, of California, when he determined 

 to commemorate the short life of his only son by erecting 

 a university in his memory, had the practical good sense to 

 call to his assistance an artist trained by long years of experi- 

 ence in dealing' with large questions of rural and in-ban im- 

 provement. Tlieanswerto the problem which wasgiven to I\Ir. 

 Olmsted to solve is found in the plan, a part of which is printed 

 upon page 508 of this issue of Garden and Forest. The prob- 

 lem was an interesting and remarkable one. No one before, 

 it is safe to say, has deliberately set about building a great 

 university, with a university town and all the appliances 

 thought necessary for a modern education, in a situation re- 

 mote froni any great centre of population. Mr. Olmsted, 

 therefore, has had to deal with questions which are quite 

 unlike those found in his own experience, and for which tliere 

 are no precedents in the work of other landscape gardeners. 



The ground which he has studied with rei:erence to this 

 plan embraces about 7,000 acres, the map here presented 

 covering an area of about one mile in length by half a mile in 

 width. It is situated in the San Jos^ valley, about thirty miles 

 from San Francisco, overlooking the head of the Bay of San 

 Francisco, and not far from Menlo Park, the suburban or 

 country-home of several prominent Californians. It occupies 

 the roiling slopes of the low hills of one of the interior Coast 

 Ranges. The heights extending above and towards the left 



