that it looks like a walking umbrella, the handle supplied by the elongated oval body which rises from the center of the disk. At the base of the body, next the arms, are a pair of goggle eyes, which seem to wear anything but an amiable expression as we cautiously seize him by the body and introduce him forcibly into a jar of sea-water, taking care that he does not clasp his sucker-covered arms around our hands as we perform the operation.

Small and comparatively innocent is this Octopus punctatus Gabb, for he does not measure more than two feet from tip to tip of arms, but even he, could he get our finger between the parrot-like jaws which lie deep down inside the umbrella, would make us think we had caught a tartar. This, and the six others we see before our excursion is ended, are all baby Octopi, but in the market of San Francisco occasionally hangs a "devil-fish ” of the same species with arms from five to six feet long, an uncanny object when dead, and one to be avoided when alive. Not long ago in the Straits of Fuca, near Victoria, an Indian woman was drowned by an Octopus probably of this species. John Keast Lord tells us that the Indians of Vancouver's island fish for them with a spear and a knife, each at the end of a pole some fifteen feet long. Driving the spear into the body they hold the Octopus at a safe distance while, wielding the knife with the other hand, they sever one by one the formidable arms, whose double rows of suckers would, could they but once lay hold, never leave their victim till he was brought within reach of the jaws. An old Frenchman who comes along with one of these octopi impaled on a stick tells us he is taking it for a treat to his wife and family. Finding a second, he grows ecstatic as he pounds its head (as he calls the body) on a rock, apostrophizing it meanwhile in terms of mingled dislike and contentment. They surely must be good. Frenchmen eat them, Spaniards think "gibiones" a delicacy, Italians do not disdain them, Chinamen devour them; why not Anglo-Saxons? But the Anglo-Saxon, and the Celt also, have much to learn yet in the way of food, and must surely learn much as the world becomes more crowded, unless they wish to be "improved" away from the face of the earth.

We have now rounded the point, and reached the valley beyond. There is the usual sandbar, backed by a small lagoon, from which a rillet flows across the beach. Here we leave the shore and ascend the hill, gathering the wild flowers as we go. Patches of

Lupinus micranthus and Orthocarpus erianthus fleck the hillside with blue and white, but the show of the flowers is not on this southern side, exposed to the rough westerly blasts of the Pacific as they sweep through the valley, but on the moister and comparatively sheltered north-eastern slope. One of the most abundant of flowers, here and in the whole vicinity of San Francisco, is the Enothera primuloides, a stemless plant with yellow blossoms, each on its own peduncle, reminding us of the primrose. Another flower, plentiful on this hill, but very local in its distribution, is the purple and white Collinsia bicolor, belonging to the same order with the Mimuli, two kinds of which, Mimulus luteus and M. glutinosus, may be found near by, the former by the water-courses and in the wet places which abound after the heavy rains, the latter on the dry hillsides. The great yellow daisy-like Layia platyglossa, with its ray-florets tipped with cream-color, from which it has earned the name of "tidy-tips," is to be seen here and there, but does not show as it does across the bay, at Oakland, where whole fields are golden with its blossoms.

The Eschscholzia californica is here, of course; there is not a month in the year when it cannot be found, but now it is in its glory, its gorgeous orange petals inducing every urchin that comes along to gather the "lilies," as he calls them.

Another of the poppy-tribe the little "cream-cup," Platystemon californicum Bentham, may be found if looked for, for it is modest, unlike poppies in general. Orthocarpus is a very conspicuous genus in California generally, on this hill-side we gather, besides the white one already mentioned, the purple and yellow O. castillejoides, and the tiny-flowered O. pusillus.

Nemophila insignis is almost out of blossom, yet we find a few, and among the loose stones high up the hill we find one of its rarer relations, the rough, almost prickly, Phacelia loasifolia Torrey. The more common Phacelias, P. circinata, with its coarse foliage and cat's tail-like curled flower-spikes, and the more delicate P. tanacetifolia, we do not meet with in this ramble.

The rose order is represented only by one plant, the humble Acana trifida, a near relation of the Sanguisorba or Burnet.

Almost the only shrubs to be found are a dwarf oak and the poison oak, Rhus diversiloba Torrey-Gray, the latter unfortunately only too common, as we find to our cost next day, when our wrists inflame and become covered with the pustules produced

by its juice. It lurks in every bunch of tall herbage, its glossy, green leaves and greenish racemes of flowers mingled with the vetches, phacelias, and other innocent plants in so intricate a way that it is almost impossible to collect them without contact with it. On the hillsides it is low and straggling, its roots running to great distances under the surface, and throwing up stems and leaves in unexpected places; in the copses it forms large bushes, alone or mingled with other shrubs; but in the forests it is a huge climber, mounting the tall pines and firs and strangling them. When a climber, its leaves are much larger and lighter in color, and it is usually believed to be a different plant from its humbler brethren of the meadows, being distinguished as Poison ivy.

There is but little of animal life on the down, for there is no shelter for birds, or thicket-loving mammals. The ground-squirrel, Spermophilus beecheyi, is present here as it is in every green field and every hill-side round the bay.

Man has killed off its natural enemies, the smaller carnivorous mammals and the birds of prey, and has planted the once wild country with seeds that suit its appetite, so that it flourishes and increases in spite of poison, traps, and guns, till it is a terrible nuisance to every farmer. The only other wild quadruped we find is not a mammal, but a lizard. We come upon two individuals among a heap of stones, and after quite a chase, capture one, a fine fellow, in a livery of reddish and yellowish-brown mixed with darker tints. It has quite a long tail as it is, yet it has evidently been mended at the tip. It is Gerrhonotus grandis.

We are now at the foot of the hill, close to the Chinese colony, from whose huts arises a most unsavory smell of rotting fish. Here we have John Chinaman at his lowest, dwelling in squalid huts with ground for the floor, yet even here his virtues of persistent industry, economy, and quickness to lay hold of everything which can be turned to account, are clearly evident. All the day these fishers work, their unwieldy flat-bottom boats are scattered in all directions, and their nets are spread for big and little fish alike, spite of laws against the destruction of fry. The little fish disdainfully thrown on the shore and left to rot by the Italian fisherman, are by the Chinese gathered carefully up and dried. While the white laborers assemble by thousands to hear incendiary speeches, with occasional adjournments to the nearest saloon, John calmly works on. If the capitalist employs

him, he does his duty; if left without employment from others, he finds out work for himself; he runs a laundry; he fishes; he peddles vegetables; he hunts up rags and bones; he turns gardener, choosing all the little valleys between the sand hills, irrigating them, and raising large crops where the white man raised nothing; all the time serenely confident that as long as his prices are lowest, he will find plenty of customers, some of the best of them among the very men who shout so loudly "the Chinese must go." Truly, unless the government promptly pass some law to restrain the Chinamen from free access to these shores, the poor white man even if sober and industrious, will soon find life growing very hard, for what chance has he, with his ideas of comparative luxury in house, food and clothing, probably a wife and family, and often some intellectual tastes also, against a rival who lives in an unfloored hut, feeds on rice, stuffs his blouse with hay when the weather is cold, has only himself to keep, and never troubles his head about literature, science, or politics, yet all the time keeps a keen eye on the main chance, earning and keeping every cent he can, and scarcely ever resting from labor except for the needful sleep.

Note. In my last paper I referred the Planorboid shell found in Mountain lake, S. F., to the genus Helisoma, but I find it to be a genuine Planorbis. The tiny little flat shell from the same pond is Menetus opercularis. Prof. Verrill has informed me that the small starfish mentioned as probably new is the Asterias equalis of Stimpson. It is rare and local in this neighborhood.

:0:

SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CENTRAL ZOÖPROVINCE OF THE UNITED

GEOGRAPHICAL

STATES.1

IN

BY A. S. PACKARD, JR.

recent studies on the extent of the native breeding places of the Rocky Mountain locust, my attention, while in the field and afterwards in working up some of the results then obtained, has been directed to some of the faunal characteristics of the Central province; my own observations bearing especially on the distribution of certain insects and especially the Phyllopod Crustacea, whose distribution west of the Mississippi presents some points of considerable interest.

ton.

Read at the last April meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, Washing

The first attempt to divide the United States as a whole into zoological provinces was in 1859, by Dr. LeConte, in his "Coleoptera of Kansas and Eastern New Mexico (Smithsonian Contributions, 1859)." He divided the Coleopterous fauna of the United States into three great zoological districts, distinguished each by numerous peculiar genera and species, which, with but few exceptions, do not extend into the contiguous districts. He named them the Eastern, Central and Western divisions; so that to him is due the credit of first distinguishing the Central province.

In 1866, Prof. Baird,1 from a study of the avifauna of the United States, concluded that "the ornithological provinces of North America consist of two great divisions of nearly equal size in the United States, meeting in the vicinity of the 100th meridian, the western half divisible again into two, more closely related to each other than to the eastern, though each has special characters. These three sections form three great provinces to be known as the western, middle and eastern; or those of the Pacific slope; of the great basin, the Rocky mountains and the adjacent plains; and of the fertile plains and region generally, east of the Missouri."

In 1871, Mr. J. A. Allen,2 divided the avifauna of the United States into two provinces, the eastern and western, the latter embracing the Pacific coast. (Since this paper was read Mr. Allen's late essay has appeared, in which he adopts Prof. Baird's division. into three provinces. The geographical distribution of the mammalia, etc. Bulletin of Hayden's U. S. Geographical and Geological Survey of the Territories, May 3, 1878).

In 1873, Mr. W. G. Binney published a map of the distribution of our land shells, dividing the molluscan fauna into the Eastern, Central and Pacific provinces.

In 1875, Prof. E. D. Cope in his check list of North American Batrachia and Reptilia' divided the Nearctic realm of Sclater into the Austroriparian, Eastern, Central, Pacific, Sonoran and Lower Californian regions. He remarks that "the Pacific region is nearly related to the Central, and, as it consists of only the narrow district west of the Sierra Nevada, might be regarded as a sub-divi

1 American Journal of Science and Arts, January and March, 1866.

2 Bulletin of the Museum of Comp. Zoology, April, 1871.

3 Catalogue of the Terrestrial Molluscs of North America.

* Bulletin U. S. Nat. Mus., Washington, 1875. Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool., 1873.