This species was sent by Mr. Douglas to the Horticultural 

 Society ; and of such importance do we consider it to the embel- 

 lishment of our Gardens, that if the expense incurred by the Horti- 

 cultural Society in Mr. Douglas's voyage had been attended with no 

 other result than the introduction of this species, there would have 

 been no ground for dissatisfaction. It is not the number of objects 

 that a public body or an individual accomplishes, that creates a 

 claim to public gratitude, so much as their utility ; and in this view 

 the gentleman who brought the first live plant of the now common 

 China Rose to England deserves his country's gratitude in a greater 

 degree than all the collectors who sent plants to Kew for the next 

 twenty years. But if we consider that it is not R. sanguineum alone 

 that the Horticultural Society has introduced through the same active 

 traveller, but that the gigantic Pines of North-west America, one of 

 which yields timber superior to the finest larch ; Acer macrophyl- 

 lum, the wood of which is as much better than our Sycamore as the 

 species is superior in the beauty and amplitude of its foliage ; Gaul- 

 theria Shallon, an evergreen shrub of great merit ; have all been 

 secured to this country, and distributed in every direction, — -to say 

 nothing of the beautiful Lupines, Pentstemons, Berberries, CEno- 

 theras, and other plants of less moment, — when all this, we say, is 

 considered, it is not too much to assert, that this result alone has 

 justified all the expenditure of the Society's Garden from the com- 

 mencement, and has stamped it with a character of great national 

 utility, which nothing but future mismanagement can shake. 



The following is Mr. Douglas's own account of this plant : — 



" This forms an erect, branching bush, exceeding six feet in height, 

 with red smooth branches, the younger twigs covered with short, brown, 

 bristly hairs, which fall away along with the thin deciduous bark of the first 

 year. The leaves are heart-shaped, more than two inches long, one and a 

 half broad, dark green above, hoary and downy beneath, on footstalks of 

 equal length with the leaves, which are more or less pubescent and glandular, 

 having conspicuous ciliated or slightly fringed stipules. Flotver-stalks 

 about four inches long, lax, more pubescent than the leaves. Calyx half 

 an inch long, the tube nearly bell-shaped, short in proportion to the spread- 

 ing segments, pink or crimson. Petals obovate, one-third shorter than the 

 limb, white, becoming of the same colour as the calyx after they have been 

 some days expanded. Stamens of the same length as the petals. Anthers 

 white. Style slightly cloven. Berry turbinate, three-eighths of an inch 

 long, brownish black, hairy, having a tough, leathery, thick skin, with 

 numerous small angular seeds, adhering together by a small portion of 

 limpid viscid mucus, and completely destitute of the pulpy substance peculiar 

 to most species of this tribe. 



" So long ago as the year 1787, my esteemed friend Archibald Menzies, 

 Esq., during his first voyage round the world, discovered this species near 

 Nootka Sound ; and subsequently on his second voyage with the celebrated 

 Vancouver, in 1792, found it again on various points of the coast of North- 

 west America. From that period to 1814, it lay unnoticed in our Herbaria ; 

 when the above-quoted author described it, partly from specimens collected 

 in 1805 by the enterprising American travellers Lewis and Clarke, during 



