A SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CANON. 



585 



times more numerous ; and, by the fostering aid of man, 

 the accumulative efiects of modified environment and 

 selection are much more quickly seen — and therefore 

 more intelligible — than in wild plants. My nearest 

 neighbor, who is a paleontologist, and myself, a horti- 

 culturist, compare our respective fields of study to the 

 decay and burning of a log. In both decay and burning 

 the same amount of work is finally accomplished and the 

 same amount of heat is evolved, but one process requires 

 years, perhaps a century, for its accomplishment, and 

 the other requires but a few hours. Cultivated plants 

 afford within definite periods of time as much variation 

 and progression as their wild prototypes exhibit in ages. 

 So the garden is one of the best places in which to study 

 evolution. It is a common opinion, to be sure, that the 

 variation of cultivated plants is anomalous and unin- 

 structive because influenced by man, but this is wholly 

 erroneous. I have yet to find a variation in cultivated 

 plants which cannot be explained by laws already an- 

 nounced and well known. It is strange that one can ever 

 believe that any variation of natural objects is unnatural. 



But wholly aside from the fascinations of pure science, 

 cultivated plants and cultivation itself demand the at- 

 tention of the botanist, for horticulture is nothing more 

 than an application of the principles of botany. Just 

 now, mycology is making important additions to horti- 

 cultural practice, but there are greater fields for the ap- 

 plication of an exact science of plant physiology, when- 

 ever that science shall have reached a proportionate de- 

 velopment. In short, the possibilities in horticulture, 

 both in science and practice, are just as great as they are 

 in the science of botany upon which it rests ; and inas- 



much as it is absolutely impossible to separate horticul- 

 ture and botany by any definition or any practical test, 

 the two should go together in an ideal presentation of the 

 science of plants. Horticulture belongs to botany rather 

 than to agriculture. 



The ideal chair or department of botany, therefore, 

 should comprise, in material equipment, laboratories, 

 botanic gardens, greenhouses, orchards, vegetable and or- 

 namental gardens, all of which should be maintained for 

 purposes of active investigation rather than as mere col- 

 lections ; and I am sure that no department of botany 

 can accomplish the results of which the science is capable 

 until such breadth of equipment is secured. I am aware 

 that there are difficulties in such a comprehensive field, 

 but the only serious one is the lack of men. Botanists, 

 as a rule, care little for gardens and cultivated plants, 

 and horticulturists are too apt to undervalue the impor- 

 tance of scientific training and investigstion ; but the time 

 cannot be far distant when men shall appear with suffi- 

 cient and practical training to appreciate the needs of 

 the whole science, and with enough executive ability to 

 manage its many interests Men are no doubt teaching 

 in some of our colleges to-day who might do this work 

 well were the opportunity open to them. One cannot be 

 a specialist in all, or even several, of the many subjects 

 comprised in this ideal, but he may possess the genius to 

 encourage and direct the work of other specialists. The 

 first need is the opportunity, for there is not yet, so far 

 as I know, an ideal chair of botany in existence, where 

 the science can be actively studied in its fullest possibili- 

 ties and then be presented to the student and the world. 



L. II. Bailey, in Science. 



A SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CANON. 



THE FLORA OF 



ASTERN readers are often puzzled 

 by the meaning of the word 

 cafion, the name being applied 

 to narrow, shallow valleys, to 

 gorges with deep, precipitous 

 walls, or to what in England 

 would be called defiles. The mesa lands 

 bordering the const of southern California 

 are broad level plains, deeply cut by narrow chasms 

 ^ that are always invisible to the eye until one 

 -A- stands upon their very brink. At the bottom of 

 these caiJons there is frequently, in springtime, a 

 muddy little stream, but through the greater portion of 

 the year only sand and water-worn pebbles and boulders 

 mark their course. The mesas are densely covered 

 with a growth of chaparral (brush), composed largely of 



THE WILDERNESS. 



adenostoma, rhus, ceanothus and scrub-oak, but large 

 areas are destitute of perennial vegetable growth, except 

 for the occasional cactuses and undiscouraged forms of 

 earth-lichens, which lend color to the landscape. 



The canons, too, are often densely wooded with im- 

 penetrable thickets of manzanita or other growth ranging 

 about breast high, in which the rabbit and coyote once 

 played hide and seek. 



Among the foothills at the base of the Sierras there are 

 larger and deeper canons with perennial streams and a 

 ranker growth of vegetation, often arborescent in char- 

 acter. In one of these I spent a few hours with a friend 

 in the latter part of April, and while resting on one of 

 the smoothly worn boulders of a dry side-arroyo, I made 

 a few notes which may be of interest to others. 



The Tree Poppy. — The canon slopes for half a mile 



