248 East and West 
marshalled upon the plain in thousands like an 
encamping host, stretch away in the distance 
as far as the eye can see? 
While a few families may be emphatically 
of one side or the other of the continent, 
the majority are transcontinental but are 
represented by different branches—different 
species, that is, and often by different genera, 
—in one or another part of the country. None 
are more cosmopolitan than the mints, known 
to us in the East largely by the spearmints, 
peppermints, self-heal, and other common 
plants but in California far more dominant, for 
the shrubby audibertias, called sages, cover 
the hills,—the black sage, the handsome lilac- 
flowered sages, and the white sage which is the 
favourite bee plant of the Coast Range. The 
genus Salvia is conspicuous in Southern 
California and Arizona and the chia with its 
blue flowers and wine-coloured bracts is as 
common there as is self-heal with us. These 
sages are not to be confused with the sage- 
brush, which is an artemisia; and while the 
white sage is sometimes called ‘‘ greasewood,”’ 
that term is more generally applied to a mem- 
ber of the rose family and really belongs to the 
sarcobatus of the river bottoms. 
Figwort, too, is a cosmopolitan family, but 
