Santa Cruz Island. 3 



^orm an easy roadway between the ranch and the wharf a distance 

 of three miles. In the neighborhood of the landing are some 

 vegetal traces ^f early settlers whose names are now lost: for ex- 

 ample, the common castor bean grows luxuriantly along the bases 

 of the bluffs, almost as if indigenous, which of course it can not 

 be, and the tree has not been planted on the island by any one 

 within the memory of people now d^velling there; and fennel, of 

 equally undoubted foreign derivation, is plentiful high up on the 

 hillsides, at this same point, but not elsewhere. Also a single 

 large and shapely pear tree, very prolific and its fruit of fair qual- 

 ity, a tree which must be fifty, if not eighty years old, flourishes 

 on a level piece of ground, just at the entrance of the cailon. The 

 canon though deep is not so very narrow, room being found for 

 considerable groups, here and there, of live oaks, willows and 

 poplars, besides a liberal growth of the smaller trees and shrubs, 

 such as are familiar. But the precipices and rocky steeps on either 

 side are the home of some more than usually interesting bushes, 

 whose charm to the botanist's eye lies in the fact that they are 

 peculiar to this island, have not been met with in any other part 

 of the wide world, not even on the other islands of the group.j 



The two or three miles width of mountains which lie westward 

 of the central valley, and form a dozen miles of the island's south- 

 ward slope, bear a different vegetation Irom that of the northward 

 slope. It takes the character of what is called, in California, 

 chaparral, con isting of adenostoma, ceanothus, two species of 

 manzanita.two or three kinds of scrub oak and a singularly large, 

 shrubby §castilleia, the whiteness of whose foliage presents a 

 striking contrast to the bright green of the other shrubbery amid 

 which it grows. But the chaparral is neither so dense nor so 

 universally prevalent as to exclude grassy vegetation, and the 

 whole southward slope as well as the north side of the island 

 affords abundant pasture. The oaks and manzanitas, although 

 lower than the same species on the mainland, fruit plentifully, and 

 this region is consequently the favorite haunt of countless wild 

 hogs and small foxes. These two species of mammals, the first, 

 of course, having been introduced, are the only wild animals larger 

 than mice, which inhabit the island. Even the rabbits, so com- 

 mon elsewhere in California, are wanting here. The proprietor 

 introduced, some years ago, wild turkeys from Texas, and they 

 survive, but have scarcely multiplied, a circumstence to be ac- 

 counted for by the almost incredible number of foxes which one 



JEriogonum arbokescens, Greene, Bull. Cal. Acad. i. ii and Corethrogyne detonsa 

 Greene, Bull. Torr Club, x. 41. 



§ Cast'lleia hololkuca. Shrubby, 3 to 5 feet high, white throughout with a dense floccose 

 tomentum: branches slender, leafy, with axillary, elongated, very leafy branchlets : leaves all 

 narrowly linear, entire, i to 2 inches long, less than a line wide: spike, 2 to 4 inches long, short- 

 peduncled: bracts linear-spatulate, entire, on the uppermost 3-cleft. with cream colored tips: 

 calyx 8 lines long, deeply cleft on the upper side, merely lobed on the lower: galea of the co- 

 rolla shorter than the tube, exserted, straight. 



Species allied to C. foliolosa, but many times larger, with denser tomentum. and different 

 leaves and flowers. 



