AMERICAN OAKS 31 



[A number of side-notes, chiefly from Pursh or Michaux, have heen added 

 to this MS. in Douglas's handwriting. These have heen incorporated in the 

 text.— Ed.] 



SOME ACCOUNT OF THE AMEEICAN OAKS, PARTICULARLY 

 OF SUCH SPECIES AS WERE MET WITH DURING A 

 JOURNEY FROM * TO * , IN THE 



YEAR 1823 BY DAVID DOUGLAS, IN A LETTER TO THE 

 SECRETARY, JOSEPH SABINE, F.R.S. 



Sir, — Among the more important instructions with which I was 

 charged by the Horticultural Society during my late mission to the State 

 of New York, I was commissioned to employ that time which could not 

 be devoted to the procuring of Hving plants for the garden, to obtaining 

 whatever specimens might be in my power for the Herbarium. The only 

 opportunity which I enjoyed of doing this was during a journey to 



* ; but the hasty manner in which I was obUged to travel, and the 

 lateness of the season, prevented my forming an extensive Hortus Siccus. 

 The oaks, from their number and beauty and the acknowledged utihty 

 of their wood, particularly attracted my attention, and of the thirty-four 

 species enumerated by Pursh as natives of the vast continent of North 

 America, I was so fortunate as to meet with no less than nineteen. Some 

 account of these I have drawn up, adding to the specific characters, and 

 a few synonyms, such information as I was able to collect in the country, 

 together with some observations which I have extracted from the beautiful 

 work of Michaux, a botanist whose long residence in the United States 

 gave him such faciUties in ascertaining the nature and uses of the forest 

 trees as it has scarcely fallen to the lot of any other naturaUst to possess. 

 Such as these my imperfect notices are, I take the liberty of submitting 

 them to your attention, and have the honour to be. 



Your very obedient and obliged 

 humble Servant, 

 D. Douglas. 



In the arrangement of the following species of oak, I have thought it 

 best to follow the divisions adopted by Michaux, first according to the 

 annual or biennial fructifications (characters which he has fully explained 

 in his admirable ' North American Sylva,' pubhshed at Philadelphia 1817), 

 and secondly as to the modes of divisions of the leaves. 



* The blanks occur in the MS.— Ed. ' 



