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Dear Dr. McVaugh: Until you suggested it, I hadn't thought of writing up my plant collecting in Mexico. But I can see that it might be desirable to have available in recognized botanical publications certain basic information about all botanical collections-areas covered, dates involved, notes on dominant or unusual species observed, etc. So here you have my contribution for the files.

My first trip to Mexico was in the summer of 1939, and collecting, I must confess, was a side line-subordinated to getting a quick, general tourist's-and eye view of Mexico, gathering impressions of the country, the people, and learning entirely conversational a little bit of the language. Collecting was done almost along the automobile highways selected from the comparatively few open at that time. The trip, though superficial, served several useful purposes. It infected me with a love of the country and its people from which I never expect fully to recover. It introduced me to a new kind of fun-learning to speak a Mexican language other than my own-and it plunked me down in the middle of a colorful strange flora which made the Pennsylvania Poconos where I had done my previous collecting seem dull, indeed, by comparison.

During that summer 324 numbers were collected and deposited in the herbarium of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. A large part of the collection came from along the Pan American between Laredo and Mexico City-a region of great diversity both scenically and floristically. Certain plants still stand out vividly in my recollections of that highway: Leucophyllum texanum, so appropriately called "cenizo" by the Mexicans; Cordia Boissieri, the "anacahuite", whose fruit was eaten by the herds of goats that roamed the dry plains of the north; mezquite with its feathery foliage; Argemone, the Mexican poppy; and Nicotiana glauca, a wild tobacco. Here, too, I saw the first representatives of these genera that were to become, for me, familiar elements of the Mexican flora - Cupheas, Ruellias and Gomphrena. Trips out of Mexico included the following:

1. To the Pyramids of Teotihuacan, where I saw my first Mirabilis Jalapa, the four o'clock, growing wild, and where I became familiar with some of Mexico's most common weeds-Stevia linoides, Sanvitalia procumbens, Sphaeralcea angustifolia, Mentzelia hispida, Bouvardia triphylla and Gaura coccinea.

2. To Guadalajara: with a side trip, also by car, into the crater of the Nevada de