14 A CENTURY Of PROGRESS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



Three botanical explorers, Archibald Menzies, David Douglas, and John 

 Jeffrey, were born only a few miles apart, in the county of Perth, in England. 

 The last of the trio, John Jeffrey, collected plants and seeds in northern California 

 and Oregon during 1852-1853, sponsored by the "Oregon Committee" of Edin- 

 burgh, which had raised money by subscription for what is generally called the 

 ■'Oregon Expedition." Each member was to receive a portion of the seeds col- 

 lected. Jeffrey was chosen and contracted to keep a diary on the trip, but no seeds 

 ever reached Scotland. Of perhaps ten boxes of seeds and specimens sent, five 

 reached England but they contained relatively few herbarium collections. Jeffrey 

 botanized in the Salmon River Mountains and on the south slope of Mount Shasta, 

 and reached San Francisco on October 7. He was ill in San Francisco that 

 winter, and did not write his sponsors in Edinburgh or even call for his mail at 

 the British Consulate. Mr. William Murray, of Henderland, who was in San 

 Francisco during the fall of 1853, and Andrew Murray, brother of the secretary 

 of the Committee, could not locate Jeffrey in the city. Jeffrey, perhaps through 

 a friend, dispatched a final small box of tree seeds early in January of 1854. 

 Sometime in the spring of that year Jeffrey is said to have left with an American 

 party for Yuma, with the intention of collecting on the Colorado Desert. He 

 was never heard from again and only conjectures surround his death. "Bearing 

 in mind that Menzies and Douglas went to a virgin country, [Jeffrey's] collec- 

 tions [after them] do him no discredit, even as compared with theirs." 



Jeffrey's unfinished work was carried on by William Murray, accompanied 

 by A. F. Beardsley, "a gentleman from whose energy and knowledge of the 

 mode of life in the regions they traversed, he derived much assistance." They 

 collected conifers, so much in demand in British gardens, in the Sierra Nevada, 

 including Pinus Beardshyi, later considered a synonym of Pi7ius ponderosa. 

 Beardsley visited the Santa Lucia range in 1856 for seeds of Abies venusta, 

 which had been recently introduced into England by William Lobb. But evi- 

 dently neither Murray nor Beardsley were employees of Peter Lawson and 

 Company, Scottish seedsmen. William IT. Brewer, wlio reenters our chronicle 

 later, met Beardsley in October, 1861, at a tavern in Napa Valley whence Brewer, 

 then with the State Geological Survey, had repaired "to read the news." Brewer 

 says: 



While there, a rough but intelligent looking man entered into conversation and 

 invited me to his house a few rods distant for a "glass of good cider." I went, got the 

 cider, the best I have tasted in the state, and went into his house. I found him an 

 intelligent man, quite a botanist, and even found that he had some rare and expensive 

 illustrated botanical works, such as Silva Americana, worth sixty to eighty dollars — the 

 last place in the world I would have looked for such works. He does not own the ranch, 

 is merely a hired man. having charge! There is an oichard of ten or twelve thousand 

 trees and a vineyard — he makes wine and cider and sells fruit. 



Brewer returned the next day for more cider : 



Mr. Beardsley came to camp and invited us to his house for more cider. We went, 

 spent an hour, when it cleared up, and we started for a peak seven or eight miles 

 northeast. 



Just as Douglas and Jeffrey collected seeds and plants in California for 

 English horticulture, William Lobb spent seventeen years with the nursery firm 

 of James Veitch of Exeter, going first to South America to collect orchids and 

 new plants for the "stoves." Lobb reached San Francisco in the hectic summer 



