590 Genera? Notes. [August, 
activity. I have had the good fortune to witness this process in 
two different quarters of the globe ; in Australia and in California. 
The neighborhood of San Francisco and its flora in the year 
1850 was not entirely in its natural state, but still the three orig- 
inal types of landscape that constituted the region could well be 
distinguished, The sand dunes and hills were covered by a dense 
chapparal of live oak (Quercus agrifolia), Ceanothus thyrsiflora, 
and on northern well-moistened declivities by buckeye trees 
( 4isculus californica). In some localities a wild cherry (Prunus 
ilicifolia) entered this combination, but was in growth and foliage 
so little different from the other components that it easily escaped 
notice. 
This whole region grew very little grass, a fern (Pteris aqui- 
fina) forming a kind of a rough and rather transparent turf. Wit 
the exception of a Scirpus, even on marshy places, no Cyperacecus 
plant was growing. Achillea millefolium, Baccharis, Solidago, 
Scrophularia and Mimulus. distributed in tufts, varied the other- 
wise naked ground, The depressions of this formation frequently 
contained marshes with a shrubby vegetation of currant bushes 
(Ribes malvaceum) and gooseberries (Ribes californicum) and a 
herbaceous vegetation of Helenium, Baccharis and Mimulus. ' 
‘This character of vegetation reached, almost without modifica- 
tion, up to the Mission Dolores, where grassy plains and hills, 
containing arborescent growths only in their ravines, took its 
place. A belt of the same formation extended from North Beach 
to the Presidio, interrupted here and there: by the Artemisia and 
Franseria, vegetation of the moving dunes and the seashore. 
e character of this open tract was in no way different from 
that of the common California pasturage ground when its vegeta- 
tion is not yet too much interfered with. A turf, mostly of annual 
grasses, whose monotony relieved by frequent patches of Nemo- 
hila and Eschscholtzia, is interwoven with different species of 
Panicula, Orthocarpus, Castilleja and Lupinus, the latter in their 
arborescent species frequently forming miniature forests. ce 
The third formation of landscape was the most characteristic, 
and many of the component parts of its flora have entirely dis- 
appeared from our neighborhoods; one of them, an Arenaria of 
singular beauty, probably is extinct, at least has not yet been 
found again in any other locality. ) 
This formation occupied the southern part of the peninsula, and 
consisted of a large marshy plain, merging, towards the sea, into 
the common California marsh, full of meandering, brackish creeks, 
and separated on the other side from the Ceanothus and live oak 
and chapparal, by a densely interwoven and much varied arbores- 
cent vegetation, where the trees of the chapparal mingled with — 
Myrica, dogwood (Cornus), honeysuckle (Lonicera), Garrya, bay 
tree (Oreodaphne), Photinia, etc. A corresponding h aceous 
vegetation of luxuriant J/egarrhiza, hemlock, Heracleum, differ- 
