Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 78.djvu/357

Rh expected that this collection, now probably the third in point of size, will eventually exceed all others in the amount and value of its materials for illustrating North American botany."

In the same report was published a paper on the "Food Products of the North American Indians," based upon Dr. Palmer's field notes and observations.

During the next two years Dr. Palmer was engaged in making collections of marine invertebrates and algae on the New England coast, and in going over his material at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge.

From Cambridge, at the suggestion of Professor Gray, Dr. Palmer made a trip to Florida and the Bahama Islands. A list of the algæ collected by him at this time was published by Professor Daniel Cady Eaton, of Yale, but no list of the flowering plants was published. One of the most interesting plants found by him in Florida was a yellow waterlily, Nymphæa flava, which had been figured many years before by Audubon, but which had remained unknown except through Audubon's figure until its rediscovery by Palmer. In Audubon's figure the leaves of a Nuphar instead of those of a Nymphæa had been depicted, and Dr. Palmer's specimens were the first to establish the true nature of the plant.

In 1875 Dr. Palmer visited Guadalupe, an island lying some distance off the coast of Lower California, which had never before been visited by a botanist. His collections on this island revealed a fauna and flora of peculiar interest, connecting it rather with upper California than with the adjacent peninsula. Every bird in his collection except a single sea bird proved to be new to science, though represented by allied forms on the mainland; and among the plants there were twenty-one new species, the greater part of which proved to be peculiar to the island. The account of Dr. Palmer's personal experiences on the island is most interesting, but unfortunately there is not space here to repeat it.

While on the island he lived in a dug-out with a roof of poles covered with dirt. His explorations were attended with much difficulty and for several weeks he was seriously ill. Sometimes in order to secure plants growing on the faces of cliffs, which had been preserved on account of their inaccessible position from the greed of goats, he made use of a noose at the end of a long pole, much to the amusement of the herders, who laughed at the doctor's attempts to "lasoo plants." Many of the species could have been secured in no other way. "Goats," he says, "were my only rivals; but they made a clean sweep of everything in reach, not discriminating between what was common and what was rare."