EDWARD PALMER 349 



The months of November and December, 1875, were spent in south- 

 western Utah, where he made a collection of the principal plants and 

 the plant products of the Paiutes. An account by Dr. Palmer of 

 " Indian Pood Customs " was afterwards published in Volume 12 of 

 the American Naturalist, and reprinted in the American Journal of 

 Pharmacy in 1878. Several burial mounds in the vicinity were opened 

 by Dr. Palmer, and a valuable collection of pottery, beads, etc., resemb- 

 ling similar objects of Pima and Hopi Indians of Arizona, was made 

 and sent to the National Museum. 



From St. George, Utah, Dr. Palmer went to San Bernardino, Cali- 

 fornia, for necessary supplies, and then back to Arizona, where he 

 visited the Mohave Indians of the Colorado Eiver, concerning whose 

 arts and customs he obtained valuable notes, describing their methods 

 of fishing, trapping, pottery-making, food preparing, their navigation 

 on balsas made of bundles of reeds and their primitive methods of agri- 

 culture. He also collected a number of living cactaceaB characteristic 

 of the vegetation of the region, including the giant Cereus, for exhi- 

 bition at Philadelphia. 



From Camp Mohave he crossed the desert to San Bernardino, dis- 

 covering on the way a beautiful little plant which proved to be the type 

 of a new genus of the poppy family, and to which Professor Gray gave 

 the name Canbya. 



On May 29, accompanied by Dr. Parry, Professor Lemmon and Mr. 

 Craft, of Crafton, and several others, Dr. Palmer set out to climb 

 Mount San Bernardino. The next day Dr. Palmer fell from his horse 

 and severely injured his spine. He was obliged to lie until the follow- 

 ing day on an improvised bed, when he was carried to the bottom of the 

 mountain to a carriage in which Dr. and Mrs. Parry had come to take 

 him home. In the meantime an account of the expedition had been 

 published at San Bernardino, in which it was stated that the doctor 

 had been left " on the mountain without grass or water, with a man to 

 look after him." " Wherever I went for some time afterward," said Dr. 

 Palmer, " I was pointed out as the man who had been left on Grayback 

 Mountain without grass or water ; sometimes I was jocosely addressed : 

 ' Hello, old grass-and- water, how's your back ? ' " 



Dr. Palmer next visited the region surrounding San Luis Obispo, 

 California, where he secured several new species, and thence he re- 

 turned with Dr. Parry and Mrs. Parry to their home in Davenport, 

 Iowa. 



In December, 1876, he returned once more to the vicinity of St. 

 George, Utah, this time for the purpose of making archeological ex- 

 plorations for the Peabody Museum of Harvard University. Accounts 

 of the discovery of remarkable tablets bearing signs of the zodiac, con- 

 ventional figures of the planets, etc., had been recently published, and 



