172 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



21. David Douglas, Botanist, at Hawaii. 1 



By Gerald W. G. Loder. 



Mr W. F. Wilson has brought together under one cover 

 accounts of David Douglas which have appeared at different 

 times, particularly those relating to his visits to the Sandwich 

 Islands. 



A few years ago the Royal Horticultural Society published 

 the diaries of Douglas between the years 1823 and 1827, 

 together with a memoir and several appendices. 2 We do not 

 think there is much fresh matter in Mr Wilson's pamphlet, but 

 at the same time every scrap of information about Douglas is 

 of interest, and the pamphlet is enriched by two portraits and 

 several illustrations connected with Douglas's visits to Hawaii. 

 These two publications probably contain all that we shall ever 

 know about this famous man. One paper in Mr Wilson's 

 pamphlet, which does not appear in the R.H.S. publication, 

 re-opens the question of the circumstances attending his death. 

 It is an account by Messrs Pickering and Brackenbridge, two 

 members of the Wilkes Exploring Expedition, of a visit they 

 paid to the scene of Douglas's death about 6J years afterwards. 



After describing the pits and the situation, they go on to state 

 that there were many circumstances leading to the suspicion 

 that Douglas had been murdered by Ned (Edward Gurney) at 

 whose house he had breakfasted before setting out on the fatal 

 morning. Messrs Pickering and Brackenbridge do not say what 

 these circumstances were, beyond that Ned was an escaped 

 convict from Botany Bay, and that Douglas's servant who had 

 parted from him that morning also perished— we are not told 

 how. According to Messrs Pickering and Brackenbridge the 

 post-mortem which Dr Judd and Dr Rooke made when the body 

 reached the coast, was ordered in consequence of the suspicions 

 against Ned, but that it revealed no wound which could not have 

 been inflicted by a bull. It should be observed that the same 

 suspicion seems at first to have arisen in the minds of the two 

 missionaries, Joseph Goodrich and John Diell, who forwarded 

 the original account of Douglas's death home, but subsequently 



1 David Douglas, botanist, at Hawaii, by W. F. Wilson, The New Freedom 

 Press, Honolulu, 1919. 



2 See Transactions, Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society, vol. xxix., 

 part 2, page 134, for review of this publication by F. R. S. Balfour. 



