Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/301

Rh thing like justice to the Botany of California, and the expense is not the least of the drawbacks. At present it is out of my power to effect any thing further, and must content myself with particularizing the collection now made. Of new genera I am certain there are nineteen or twenty, at least, and I hope you will find many more. Most of them are highly curious. As to species, about three hundred and forty may be new. I have added a most interesting species to the genus Pinus Sabinii, one which I had first discovered in 1826, and lost, together with the rough notes, in crossing a rapid stream on my return Northward. When compared with many individuals of the genus inhabiting the western parts of this continent, its size is inconsiderable, from 110 to 140 feet high, and three to twelve feet in diameter. In the aqueous deposits on the western flanks of the Cordilleras of New Albion, at a very great elevation above the sea (1,600 feet below the line of perpetual snow), this Pine grows somewhat larger than in the more temperate parts near the coast in a more southern parallel. I sent to London a detailed account of this most beautiful tree, to be published in the Transactions of the Horticultural Society, which you will see before this can reach you, so that I will not trouble you with a further description of it. But the great beauty of California vegetation is a species of Taxodium, which gives the mountains a most peculiar, I was almost going to say awful, appearance something which plainly tells that we are not in Europe. I have never seen the Taxodium Nootkatensis of Ness, except some specimens in the Lambertain Herbarium, and have no work to refer to; but from recollection I should say, that the present species is different from it. I have repeatedly measured specimens of this tree 270 feet long and 32 feet around at three feet above the ground. Some few I saw, upwards of three hundred feet high; but none in which the thickness was greater than those I have instanced. I possess fine specimens and seeds also. I have doubled the genus Calochortus; C. luteus (Bot. Reg. t. 1567,) is especially deserving of attention, as the finest of all. To Mimulus I have also added several, among them the magnificent M. Cardinalis (Hort. Soc. Trans., N. S. v. II, p. 70, t. 3), an annual, three or four feet high, handsomer than M. luteus; Clarkia elegans (Bot. Reg. t. 1575,) is a pretty species, but hardly equal to C. pulchella; it grows to four or six feet, and has entire petals. It is to Gilia, Collomia Phlox, and Heuchera, that the greatest additions have been made: indeed, they are too numerous to mention. Something is also done among the Onagrarieœ. Besides the new genus (Zauschneria of Presl) alluded to by De Candolle in his Prodromus (vol. II, p. 35), as exhibiting the flower