1880. | Botany. 59I 
ent species of Rumex, Polygonum, and three pre species of 
Aspidium covered the black and yielding groun 
fter having penetrated this belt, you wautd enter a boggy 
prairie, in which stripes of the above-mentioned arborescent 
vegetation indicated the more elevated points and ridges. The 
vegetation of the prairie itself was a most anomalous one, consid- 
ering the een and the merely nominal elevation above the 
level of the s It was a speck of the Arctic flora. Out of a 
mossy aide rose the slender culmi of a Festuca mixed with 
Carex and Eriophorum. The characteristic Menyanthes trifoliata 
showed everywhere its feathery racemes; at present, when you 
ir to see them, you have to go to Alaska, or to very consid- 
rable mountain elevations. Besides these was growing a Mabe- 
naria and the Epipactis gigantea, two orchideous plants. Angeli- 
, Heracleum, Ginanthe, Hydrocotyle and Nuphar represented a 
ae tine which can be studied still in some localities of this 
peninsula, but not in the vicinity of the city.. Wherever the 
moisture formed a surface, it was immediately covered by the 
graceful Azol/a caroliniana, a Bidens and the Arenaria above 
mentioned that has not yet been found again. Now the first- 
mentioned type of vegetation, the chapparal, exists still in some 
fragments in the Presidio reservation; the second, that of the 
pasture land, is to be met with still, wherever the distance from 
the city is considerable enough to protect native vegetation; but 
the third type has entirely disappeared. 
We now come to the causes. It is not only the quick growth 
of the city, the sudden change of grade, etc., that have disturbed 
the original equilibrium in nature, for there still exist lonely, 
neglected places enough in the immense circumference of the 
city, where an original vegetation could have remained undis- 
turbed, and where it was protected even against the attacks of 
domestic animals. 
of ie oles are no more distinguishable: he improvements of 
a growing city have brought all to the same level. The original 
arborescents have been cut cown partly for fuel, partly to make 
room for houses. Horticulture has replaced them by the conifers 
of our Sierra and the evergreens of Australia. , 
he vegetation of the peninsula is at present more Australian 
than Californian, and if it was not for the beauty of our sequoias, 
pines and firs of our mountains, scarcely any California tree 
would have found admission. 
Parallel with this artificial immigration of Australian arbores- 
cents, goes an herbaceous immigration from Europe and Africa. 
