DAVID DOUGLAS. 1 35 



second trip he made to the Pacific Coast in 1831, when San 

 Francisco and Monterey were his headquarters for a year ; he 

 afterwards proceeded to the Sandwich Islands, from which he 

 sent home his Californian collection. He left these islands for a 

 second visit to the Columbia River in 1832, and made an 

 expedition into the Puget Sound and Fraser River country, 

 where Archibald Menzies in the Vancouver expedition of 1792 

 had already explored the shores of the innumerable inlets and 

 described much of the flora. Of this expedition, in which 

 Douglas was nearly drowned in the Fraser River, when he lost 

 all his notes and his collection of 400 species, the editor makes 

 no mention whatsoever; one cannot help regretting that 

 Douglas' long letter of 6th May 1834 to Sir William Hooker, 

 in which he described this disaster, was not published in extenso 

 in the volume before us ; it was the last of a long series that 

 he wrote to Sir William Hooker, and is dated a few months 

 before his death. I give it in full at the end of this article. 

 Indeed these letters, all preserved in the Hooker correspondence 

 at Kew, would, in the writer's opinion, have certainly formed by 

 no means the least interesting part of this record. For instance, 

 here is a description by Douglas of Finns Lambertiana in a 

 long letter to his friend, Dr Scouler, who had accompanied him 

 on his voyage round Cape Horn to the Columbia River. He 

 writes from Priest Rapids on the Columbia River on 3rd 

 April 1826. "I am in possession of a species of Pinus, the 

 finest of the genus. I hope soon to have abundance of better 

 specimens and ripe seeds. It attains the enormous height of 

 170 to 220 feet; from 20 to 50 feet (65 erased) in circumference 

 and grows remarkably straight ; the wood is very fine, the cones 

 measure 12 to 18 inches long. . . . Unquestionably this is the 

 most splendid specimen of American vegetation. What would 

 Dr Hooker give to dine under its shade ; Mr Lambert could 

 not eat anything if he saw it ! " 



These measurements of the Giant Sugar Pine, and those 

 given in his journal of 26th October 1826 of the tree he found 

 that day, 215 feet long, 57 ft. 9 ins. round at 3 feet from the 

 ground and 17 ft. 5 ins. at 134 feet, are records of this tree which, 

 as regards circumference, have never been surpassed. The 

 writer, after seeing thousands of these immense pines in the hope 

 of finding one to equal that of Douglas, had to content himself 

 with photographing one of indeed well over 200 feet high, but 



