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Vol. III. DECEMBER, 1886. No. 20 



SANTA CRUZ ISLAND. 



BY E. L. GREENE. 



An opportunity has lately been afforded me of visiting this 

 largest island of the Santa Barbara group. Although it is perhaps 

 the most easily accessible of them all, it has remained among the 

 last to be explored scientifically. My own researches, the first 

 ever made there in any branch ol natural history, have been con- 

 fined to botany ; but in my several weeks of daily botanizing I 

 could not but become more or less familiar with the physical 

 aspects of the island in general, and my impressions thereof may 

 be worth recording. The island is some thirty miles long and 

 from five to ten wide, and, as seen from Santa Barbara, only 

 twenty-five miles distant, appears to rise like a blue precipitous 

 mountain range from the bosom of the sea. The near approach 

 reveals nothing but a succession of sharply outlined hills rising 

 abruptly one behind another, the highest ridge attaining an alti- 

 tude of, I believe, a little under four thousand feet. This length- 

 wise range of mountain, which constitutes the body of the island, 

 is intersected at short intervals by deep and narrow canons which 

 run down • to the sea. In most of these running water is to be 

 found at almost any time in the year, so that the island may be 

 said to be well watered, and the common trees of the main land 

 are to be found thriving in all these canons, such as the large leaved 

 maple, (Acer Macrophyllum) live oak, (Quercus agrifolia) pop- 

 lar, (Populus trichocarpa) willow, (Salix laevigata) and many 

 others. And yet, the tree which is commonest of all in similar 

 situations on the nearest mainland, the sycamore (Platanus race- 

 mosa), is entirely absent from Santa Cruz. Heteromeles arbuti- 

 folia is altogether more abundant here than I have over seen it 

 elsewhere, but there grows along with it a fine large *ceanothus 

 which is quite new to science. The mouths of these various 

 canons afford the only landing places along all the shore. The 

 gravelly beds of the streamlets are the only portions of the island's 

 whole surface, which lead down gradually to the sea. At such 

 points only will the boatman or sailor find a narrow strip of beach, 



*Ceanothus arboreus, Greene, Bull. Cal. Acad. ii. 144. 





