1881.] Botanizing on the Colorado Desert. 29 
the evening air. They were not soon discovered, The parched 
earth showed nowhere grass or herb of any sort. One cotton- 
wood which the ranchman’s axe had spared, stood fair and 
bright in its fresh spring foliage; but the mezquit trees, notwith- 
standing the high temperature of these latter days of February, 
showed yet no sign of leaf or blossom; the larger of these, how- 
ever, seemed burdened with heavy tufts of a dark green parasite 
—a species of mistletoe (Phoradendron californicum Nutt). This 
mistletoe, upon a close inspection, was found bearing a profusion 
of small, greenish and altogether inconspicuous flowers, with 
precisely the fragrance of pond lilies; and so the pleasant riddle 
of the previous night was solved. 
The fourth day’s travel brought nothing new or specially inter- 
esting in the line of the botanical; but the larger size of the 
mezquit trees, and the more frequent occurrence of them would 
have indicated, even if the miles had not been counted, that we 
were nearing, gradually, the banks of the Colorado, the eastern 
boundary of the desert. And here let us notice more particularly 
this characteristic and most important of the native trees of the 
far Southwest, the common mezquit (Prosopis juliflora DC.). To 
give a general idea of the species, we will compare it with the 
honey locust ( Gleditschia triacanthus L.) a tree well known almost’ 
everywhere east of the Mississippi, and not remotely allied to the 
mezquit. The two species, in several points, very strongly resem- 
ble each other. The leaves and flowers of both are much alike, 
and both have their branches armed with stout, forbidding thorns. 
But while the honey locust grows erect and displays a well 
shaped head, the massive trunks of the mezquit usually almost 
recline upon the ground for about two-thirds of their length; and 
there are commonly four or five of these half reclining trunks 
growing from one root; so that a good forest of mezquit, which 
would really, if cut down, yield a vast amount of wood, looks — 
more like a straggling orchard of old and deformed apple trees 
than like what would be called a fine piece of timber. The fruit 
pods, borne in heavy clusters, are as long as those of the honey 
locust, but very narrow’ hardly the fourth of an inch in width, 
thin and flat; and instead of the sweet reddish pulp of the locust 
pod, the mezquit has its seeds imbedded in an abundance of a 
hard, white substarice, very sweet, and which the chemists tell us 
is grape sugar ina state of great purity. Horses, horned cattle 
