"She had on a gauze-like dress, trimmed with the richest and most costly Brussels lace, pillaged, no doubt, from some fandango-going belle of Sonora. She straddled a fine grey horse; and whenever her blanket dropped from her shoulders, her tawny form could be seen through the transparent gauze. After she had sold her mule, she was anxious to sell her horse, and careered about to show his qualities. Charging at full speed up a steep hill, the fastenings of her dress broke, and her bare back was exposed to the crowd, who ungallantly raised a shout of laughter. Nothing daunted, she wheeled short round with surprising dexterity, and seeing the mischief done, coolly slipped the dress from her arms, and tucked it between the seat and the saddle. In this state of nudity she rode through camp, from fire to fire, until, at last, attaining the object of her ambition, a soldier's red flannel shirt, she made her adieu in that new costume." Scattered through Mr Emory's journal, and especially after passing Santa Fé, and whilst following, with occasional deviations, the course of the Gila, are many notes and observations of much interest to the naturalist. Traversing the plains near the little town of Socoro on the Del Norte, Mr Emory noticed, as the chief growth of the sandy soil, the iodeodonda, or _Larrea Mexicana_--a new plant, which, when crushed, gives out a most offensive smell of creosote. It grows to about the height of a man on horseback, and is the only bush which mules, even when extremely hungry, refuse to eat. On the 8th October, shortly before attaining one of the southernmost points of his journey, Mr Emory found himself surrounded by a vegetable world totally different from that of the United States. The variety of enormous cacti was so great that it was impossible, with his slender means of transport, to carry away a complete collection of them. Just after turning off from the Del Norte, he passed through a valley where grew a new variety of the evergreen oak, with leaves like the holly, and which was covered with round red balls, the size and colour of apricots, the effects of disease, or of the sting of an insect. Three days later he fell in with the famous mezcal, (an agave,) "about three feet in diameter, having broad leaves, armed with shark-like teeth, and arranged in concentric circles, which terminate in the middle of the plant in a perfect cone. Of this the Apaches make molasses, and cook it with horse meat." In the districts where this plant flourishes, artificial craters are found, into which the Indians throw the fruit, with heated stones, to remove the sharp thorns and reduce it to its saccharine state. In the course of one of his botanical rambles, during a day's halt, rendered necessary by severe marches, Mr Emory came upon a settlement of tarantulas, which, on his approach, rushed fearlessly to the front of their little caves and assumed an attitude of defence.