San Jose April 27th lb91 P.O.Box 266 
Sereno «\f^ts©n Esqr 
Curator Harvard Herborlura; 
Dear Sir; If riqy manner of ad- 
-dressir^ you, should not be technically correct,! think you 
will excuse an error of that kind, in a person who has been 
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continuously otl-the ^est side of the Rocky Mountains ,8 inc e 
1852, with the exception of six months in 1876, 
It was my fortune to be appointed by the President oT 
the California State Medical Society, to open the discussion 
on the Report on Indigenous Botany etc, at the meeting of the 
Society , which was 4sld in Sacramento , during the^^ilst, 22d, 23d 
and 24th of this month. I received notice of the appointment' 
about six weeks before the meeting was to be held, and I 
thought it would be a proper thing to do,, to write out a 
brief account of the State Geological Survey, and especially 
i 
of that part of its history, in bri of , connected with the Bo tan 
-ical department thereof. K'ly paper was referrod to the Com- 
> 
-mittee on Public at ion, and probably will be published in the 
Volume of Transactions of the Society. But I will have op- 
-portunity to make any little change, in regard to matters of 
which I may procure additional information; and I would like 
to bo able to make a more definite statement in regard to the 
gentlemen who were most prominently active in performing the 
work fof^ the two volumes of the Botanical Department Report, 
