The West American Scientist. 
Vol. XIV. No. 6. 
FORESTRY. 
President Benjamin Ide Wheeler, of 
the University of California, announces 
a course of summer lectures on forestry 
at Idyllwild, ‘Strawberry Valley, San 
Jacinto mountains, Riverside county, 
California, from July 29 to August 10, 
1903,. This will be the first school of 
forestry west of the Allegheny moun- 
tains, and the lectures will be given by 
Dr. W. L. Jepson, Prof. Arnold V. Stu- 
benrauch, and (probably Mr. Gifford 
Pinchot. ‘The fee for the course will be 
six dollars. 
There is a general sentiment among 
the natives of Honolulu against vac- 
cination, as it is stated that vaccination 
spreads leprosy. A bill repealing the 
existing vaccination law was recently 
passed. 
Cac 
Cactus Connoisseurs would be the 
polite expansicn of the initials head- 
ing this article, but Cactus C.ani.s is 
possibly the more common form used 
by an indifferet worlG wher Cactus 
Collectors are referred to. 
It is proposed to collect brief sketches 
of those whose names have been con- 
nected in the past with these fascinat- 
ing plants, which in the end might be 
incorporated into an Encyclopaedia of 
Biography. 
BRIGGS, MRS. MAUD M.::: 
Mrs. Briggs will be remembered by 
eactus fanciers from her having used 
the expression, in advertising her cacti, 
that she lived ‘where they grow.’ She 
was a florist who lived at El Paso, Tex- 
as, with a penchant for using and con- 
fusing the botanical names—which left 
her correspondents in delightful sus- 
May, 1903. 
Whole No. 125. 
pense as to what they might receive. 
Chihuahua dogs were favorite pets 
With her. In 1899 she reported a new 
Mammillaria which was to be named in 
her honor—but none are known to exist 
in scientific collections, and soon after 
she ceased to live where they grow.— 
Or 
MAIN, MRS. F. M.: 
In passing through Nogales, Arizona, 
in 1899, I met this energetic woman, 
who after acquiring a substantial prop- 
ery in brick buildings, houses and lots, 
took to cactus collecting—as she frank- 
ly explained—for the money. The most 
of her collections were made in the vi- 
cinity of Nogales—mostly on the Sono- 
ra side, her expeditions extending prob- 
ably the whole length of the Sonora 
railroad. Mammillaria Mainae com- 
memorates her work, and was undaubt- 
edly obtained in the mountains of So- 
nora near Nogales—at least I was so- 
infcrmed by one of her assistants. She 
Was reported to have been killed in a 
saloon fight in 1902 (an affair that 
would have been characteristic of the 
border town in which she lived), but 
the facts were that she died in Los An- 
geles, California, from an operation for 
canger.—Or. 
NICKELS, MRS. ANNA B.: 
As a pioneer woman florist in the 
southwest, and the first woman C. Cr 
Mrs. Nickels has won wide recognition. 
and deserves more than passing notice. 
After years of correspondence, I had 
the pleasure of meeting ‘her in 1902, at 
her son’s home in San Luis Potosi—a, 
woman over seventy, still an eager en- 
thusiast, planning trips inta new re- 
gions that would be a credit to the 
modern woman. Several species named 
in her honor have been introduced to 
