THE BOTANY OF THE CUYAMACA MOUNTAINS. 
BY J. G. COOPER, M.D. 
Durixe the last week of April, 1872; I made a rapid but very 
delightful trip through a region scarcely known to naturalists, and 
of which the very name, as given above, is not, I believe, to be 
found on any published map. 
Yet it is a range equal in extent and height to the White Moun- ` 
tains of New England, that favorite resort of eastern naturalists, 
which has furnished them with so many interesting subarctic — 
species both of animals and plants. 
The highest ridge of the Cuyamaca range lies forty miles east 
of San Diego Bay, being at the southwest corner of the Union, and 
thus almost the antipodes of the White Mountains: with which,. 
however, we may compare it in many respects.* The summits of 
the three highest peaks are thus nearly as far from the coast as 
Mount Washington, and the central one, measured by my com- 
panion, Mr. W. A. Goodyear of the California Geological Survey, 
was found to be also about six thousand two hundred feet above : 
the sea by mercurial barometer. The great mass of the range is 
granite, with some mica and talcose slate on its flanks, especially 
the eastern, where there are also gold mines, not long opio but 
_ already paying well. 
The foot-hills of the range commence about ten miles from the 
— coast, some of them at once rising into rugged hills over one thou- 
-~ sand feet high, and very conspicuous from contrast with o 
Deser i which has lately been pti by 
