74 FAMILIAR GARDEN FLOiriiRS. 



This plant represents a series of hardy annuals obtained 

 from California in the early days of exploration in the " Far 

 West/' by David Douglas, who was sent out by the Horti- 

 cultural Society of London to secure new floral treasures 

 for British gardens. He was eminently successful, for he 

 not only collected plants that have proved of immense 

 value in this countrj^, but he also contributed important 

 papers to the " Horticultural Transactions " and to other 

 ])ublications of his time. This man ranks amongst the 

 " martyrs of science/'' and the very best of our hardy 

 annuals may be regarded as memorials of his honourable 

 labours and of his unhajDpy end. He was born in Scotland 

 in the j'car 1798, and early in life devoted his mind to the 

 science of botany. Being in the employ of the Horti- 

 cultural Society as a plant-collector, he explored the 

 Columbia River and California in the years 1825 to 1827, 

 securing in the interest of British horticulture a great many 

 of our now most valued hardy plants. From the Pacific 

 coast lie proceeded to the Sandwich Islands, where he met 

 with a dreadful death on the 12th of July, 183-1. It was 

 the custom then in the Sandwich Islands to capture wild 

 cattle by means of pitfalls. Into one of these pits the 

 unhappy Douglas fell, and, meeting there a captured 

 bullock, was attacked hy the beast and gored to death, no 

 help being near and nothing being known of the event 

 until the next day. 



The nemophilas, eschscholtzias, gilias, collinsias, and 

 the rest of the Californian annuals, make a finer growth 

 and richer Idoom when sown in autumn than when sown in 

 spring. The best mode of procedure is to sow at the end of 

 August or early in September, on poor, dry ground ; and 

 during severe winter weather put evergreen boughs over the 



