312 
NATURE 
[May 20,. 1915 


consciousness, such as has been too often charac- 
teristic of self-educated men of Douglas’s class. 
It is not often even that Douglas indulges in a 
reflection on the marvels of nature, new and 
wonderful as they must have appeared to him. 
Much of what he records is little more than what 
has happened on previous days, and is going to 
happen on succeeding ones. Yet in spite of a 
certain monotony, the narrative possesses that 
charm and interest which mark even the plainest 
story of the pioneer. Douglas was apparently 
but seldom in danger from Indians or animals, 
although, with regard to the former, the situation 
became strained on more than one occasion. 
Grizzly bears, too, provide an occasional excite- 
ment, and we have a glimpse (p. 217) of one of 
Douglas’s companions hurriedly climbing an oak, 
with the claws of an angry grizzly so close behind 
that his coat and trousers were torn to tatters. 
But, on the whole, it was storm and rain, cold, 
swollen rivers, excessive fatigue, and an insecure 
food supply that made up the chief hardships of 
his wanderings. The botanical interest of his 
writings is not so great as it would have been 
had the plants he met with and enumerates been 
identified. There is not so much to interest one 
in a paragraph like “ (467) Poa sp. ; annual; small, 
creeping; on the sandy banks of rivers, plenti- 
ful,” as there would be if we knew the particular 
grass to which he was referring. 
One of the most interesting items in the narra- 
tive is the collector’s quest for a pine of extra- 
ordinary dimensions of which from time to time he 
heard accounts. His final success in exciting 
circumstances is recorded on page 230 :— 
“About an hour’s walk from my camp I was 
met by an Indian, who on discovering me strung 
his bow . . . and stood ready on the defence. As 
I was convinced this was prompted by fear, I 
laid my gun at my feet and waved my hand for 
him to come to me, which he did with great cau- 
tion. With my pencil I made a rough sketch 
of the cone and pine I wanted and showed him it, 
when he instantly pointed to the hills about 
fifteen or twenty miles to the south. As I wanted 
to go in that direction he, seemingly with much 
good will, went with me. At midday I reached 
my long-wished pine, and lost no time in examin- 
ing and endeavouring to collect specimens and 
seeds. Lest I should never see my friends to tell 
them verbally of this most beautiful and immense 
tree, I now state the dimensions of the largest one 
1 could find blown down by the wind: Three feet 
from the ground, 57 feet 9 inches in circumfer- 
ence; 134 feet from the ground, 17 feet 5 inches; 
length, 215, feet.” 
The editor gives no indication of what this tree 
proved to be, but from the description we have no 
doubt that Douglas here describes the first dis- 
NO. 2377, VOL. 95] 

covery of that most wonderful of pines, Pinus 
Lambertiana, He was not permitted to get away 
from the spot unmolested, for in bringing down 
the cones with shots from his gun the reports 
brought some armed and painted Indians on the 
scene, and it was only after some hazardous 
moments and a combination of palaver and display 
of pugnacity that Douglas escaped with but three 
cones and a few twigs. 
Where a plant is mentioned by Douglas under a 
name which is not now accepted, the editor has 
given its modern equivalent in a footnote. This, 
of course, is helpful in many instances, but where 
the collector was palpably in error the fact might 
have been pointed out. Douglas was in a new 
country, but he often erroneously assumed that a 
plant he found on the western side of America was 
identical with one ~he already knew on _ the 
eastern. A novice is thereby led to believe that 
Abies balsamea, Pinus Strobus, Tsuga canaden- 
sis, Amelanchier canadensis, Picea rubra, and 
several more eastern trees are to be found in 
Oregon or California. 
We are given a portrait of Douglas (showing 
a mild but Napoleonic cast of countenance), but 
in reading the book one feels very much the need 
of a chart giving an indication of his itinerary. 
Some of his place names are not discoverable in 
the atlas. Considering the book is published at 
the not ungenerous price of one guinea net, 
we think this addition might reasonably have 
been made. In a_ series of appendices are 
given a brief memoir of Douglas, an account 
of some ascents of the mountains in the Sand- 
wich Islands, a list of the plants he introduced, 
and an account of his early and tragic death at 
the age of thirty-six in the Sandwich Islands, 
where he fell into one of the pit-traps made to 
catch wild cattle, in which an infuriated animal 
was already entrapped. 

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