Beautiful Flowering Shrubs 



under the command of the celebrated Captain Van- 

 couver (who gave the name to our colony of Van- 

 couver). And since the plant life of the countries 

 visited was a secondary object of investigation for the 

 expedition, and neither captain nor crew knew any- 

 thing of botany, Menzies was offered the appointment 

 as botanist, and thus returned to the coast he had so 

 lately seen. 



Among other places the expedition visited Nootka 

 Sound, and when it came home again, in 1795, 

 specimens of the Flowering Currant, which was found 

 all along the coast of California and Oregon, were 

 among the treasures Menzies brought back. He 

 placed the dried shoots, some in the herbarium of the 

 British Museum, and some in that of Sir Joseph 

 Banks, and there as so often happens in the case of 

 the trophies of scientific expeditions they were left 

 unheeded and ignored. Nearly twenty years later they 

 were, however, unearthed by Menzies himself, and their 

 formal description, already referred to, written up by 

 him. 



But still England knew nothing of the living plant, 

 and it was left to that remarkable botanical explorer, 

 David Douglas, of tragic fate, to produce it. In 1822 

 this plant collector was ranging America in search of 

 new spoil and, struck by the beauty of this shrub, he 



forwarded seeds of it right across the continent of 



18 



