108 United States Survey of the Territories. [February, 
time on a.memoir on this subject, which will eventually form one 
of the series of the quarto reports of the Survey. 
The botany of the Survey was represented the past season by 
the two great masters of that department, Sir Joseph D. Hooker, 
director of the Gardens of Kew, England, and president of the 
Royal Society of London; and Prof. Asa Gray, of Cambridge, 
Mass. Their examinations extended over a great portion of 
Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. Their in- 
vestigations into the alpine floras and tree vegetation of the 
Rocky mountains and Sierra Nevada enabled them to give a 
clear idea of the relations and influence of the climatic conditions 
on both sides of the great mountain-ranges. 
Sir Joseph Hooker, whose botanical researches embrace the 
greater part of Europe; the Indies from the bay of Bengal across 
the Himalayas to Thibet; the Antarctic regions and the southern 
part of South America, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, 
Morocco and Asia Minor, presents in the English periodical 
“ Nature,’ for October 25, an outline of his studies during 
the season, and this outline when filled out will form a most 
important report for the eleventh annual report of the Sur- 
vey. It will be seen at a glance that the report will be of the most 
comprehensive character, and cannot fail to be of the highest in- 
terest to our people. The tree vegetation, and especially the 
coniferze, were made special objects of study, and many obscure 
points were cleared up. 
Of a section of the Rocky mountains comprising Colorado, Wy- 
- oming, and Utah, Dr. Hooker says: 
i 
; 
À 
l 
Such a section of the Rocky mountains must hence contain 
representatives of three very distinct American floras, each char- 
acteristic of immense areas of the continent. There are -two ~ 
temperate and two cold or mountain floras, viz: (1) a prairie flora 
derived from the eastward ; (2) a so-called desert and saline flora 
derived from the west ; (3) a subalpine; and (4) an alpine flora; 
the two latter of widely different origin, and in one sense proper 
to the Rocky Mountain ranges 4 
-= The principal American regions with a the comparison 
will have first to be instituted are four. Two of these are in a : 
broad sense humid; one, that of the Atlantic coast, and which 
extends thence west to the Mississippi river, including the forested : 
shores of that river's western affluents ; the ead that of the Pa- — 
cific side, from the Sierra Nevada to the wester ocean ; an a 
inland, that of the northern part of the continent Pen to the 
