THE WEST AMERICAN SCIENTIST. 55 



ourselves oflf before partaking of an excellent dinner of corn bread, succotash, beef 

 and coffee. A sewing machine, table, rocking-chair, a good stove and other con- 

 veniencies testified to their enterprise, which became more apparent when we 

 reached the next ranch, where we found the owner surrounded by a pack of Indians 

 — all drunk! 



The 14th find an opportunity to send a letter home. The roads were found to 

 consist either of a wash where the brush had been cleaned away by the rains, or of 

 a couple of rabbit tracks running parallel to each other; when one track diverges 

 from the other, then there are two roads, each leading differently, as we found to 

 our sorrow. Many of the houses are made of mustard stalks tightly bound to a 

 framework of pole?, often forming only a circular corral, sometimes only two feet 

 high and without a roof, but the more pretentious residences of the natives were 

 square and provided with a roof. The discoveries of the day consisted of a new 

 species of cereus and Chorizanthe Fernandina, which kept us company on the rest 

 of the trip south, with a beautiful new dalea (D. Seemanni, Watson, n. s. p.) which 

 was just coming into flower on the hillsides near S.m Rafael ranch. 



April 15th we s e acres of Parry's wild rose, which was also found as for south 

 as the trip extended. Everywhere agave Shawii is to be seen, and under the dead 

 trunks of several I was delighted to find a few specimens of the island binneya no 

 tabilis, an interesting locality for this snail. 



Just before reaching the San Telmo canyon I saw the last of Arctostaphylos 

 bicolor, adenostoma fasciculatum and other northern shrubs. At San Telmo we met 

 Mr. Hyde, an American who has lived in this region for the last twenty years, and 

 learn that the San Ramon creek that is before us is impassable, owing to the melt- 

 ing of the snow on the great San Pedro Martia mountain having filled it to the 

 banks. Consequently we go down the canyon till about nine miles from the sea and 

 prepare to camp for a few days till the swollen river becomes again passable. 



Our camp was near the mouth of the large canyon, with steep banks on either 

 hand, and a large creek of clear water flowing through and numerous deep pools of 

 an inviting aspect to b ithers. 



A new phacelia (P. hirtuosa. Gray) was the first stranger to attract my atten- 

 tion here, as I wandered amo ig the agaves and cactuses, and among the rocks where 

 cotton ferns, Notholaena California and others grew in great luxuriance. Nearly all 

 the familiar plants which I find in the canyons near San Diego, such as collinsia bi- 

 color, Parry's phacelia, mimulus brevipes, krynitzkias, chaenactis, galiums, poly- 

 carpon depressum, porophyllon gracile and numberless others were found in abun- 

 dance and of a luxurious growth during the few days spent in this camp. 



In roaming about it was not long before the beautiful red and white bladders of 

 an interesting plant, which forms the type of the new genus Harfordia described re- 

 cently by Dr. Parry, attracted my attention among the small bushes on the hillsides 

 where the slender stems climbed up to sunlight, and as I became better acquainted 

 with what was not a total stranger, since I had been previously introduced to a frag- 

 ment by Dr. Parry and earnestly exhorted to seek a further acquaintance, I found 

 the sterile, bushy little plants growing openly by themselves among the rocks, not 

 seeking the support which the slenderer, twining female plants required. 



