BRIEFER ARTICLES 
THOMAS HOWELL 
(WITH PORTRAIT) 
Mr. Toomas HowELt, the pioneer botanist of Oregon, died on Decem- 
ber 3, 1912, in Portland, at the age of 70 years. He was born near 
Pisgah, Missouri, October 9, 1842, whence he moved to Oregon in 1850, 
before railroads had entered the state. Although he received a meager 
school education, he was a well learned man and an enthusiastic botanist. 
He did not marry until his 54th year. His wife and a son of seven sur- 
vive him. 
Just before his death he completed the second edition of his Flora of 
Northwestern America, replacing the BENTHAM and HooKER system with 
that of ENGLER and Prantt. This publication embodies the life work 
of Mr. HowE Lt, who spent more than 30 years tramping and traveling 
over the states of Washington and Oregon. Considering the vast area of 
these states, and the vicissitudes of pioneer life in that far isolated 
country, the task of accumulating the data for such a complete flora of 
the region is realized. Naming the localities worked in these states 
would require much space; suffice it to say, that the only places he did 
not visit were portions of central northern Washington and of the central 
part of Oregon. It is not known to the writer how much material he 
collected; the Field Museum alone has 2263 specimens. His flora lists 
and describes about 3290 species. It was the good fortune of Mr. 
HowE Lt to discover and describe the last of the Pacific coast conifers, 
Picea Breweriana, the weeping spruce, a very local tree near the Oregon- 
California line, which he first found at Waldo, in the Siskiyou Mountains, 
at an elevation of 6000 feet. 
Mr. HowELL was materially unfortunate in having lived in a region 
where his knowledge of systematic botany yielded him no financial 
remuneration, save from the limited sale of his book. His love of study 
and enjoyment of the vastness of the Pacific Northwest he considered 
ample reward. The sad part of his later life was his limited finances. 
For the last several years he was compelled to live in a poor foreign 
section of Portland, eking out a frugal existence in a small grocery- 
confectionery store, which also served as his residence. When visited 
last by the writer, he was making coarse teamsters mittens on a sewing 
Botanical Gazette, vol. 55] [458 
