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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



in letters to friends at home. Of California he writes : "Well does 

 it merit its name. The heat is intense and the dryness of the 

 atmosphere invariable, not infrequently 129 degrees, which, if I 

 mistake not, is not exceeded in Africa or Persia. In this fine country 

 how I lament the want of such majestic rivers as the Columbia !" 



From time to time he contrived to make excursions to the interior 

 and into the mountains of the coast, until the end of April, when he 

 undertook a journey to Santa Barbara about May 15. 



During one of these excursions from Monterey into the mountains, 

 Douglas had the good fortune to discover this secluded Bristle- 

 cone Fir, which he announces thus to his learned friend Hooker : 

 "I will now mention another new Pine to you, Pinus venustaj 

 which I discovered last March (1831) on the high mountains 

 of California (you will begin to think that I manufacture Pines 

 at pleasure). As my notes are not at hand " (they were subse- 

 quently lost), *'Imust describe from memory." Unfortunately, he 

 had no opportunity to revise and correct his descriptions aided by his 

 notes, as he lost his life soon after in the Sandwich Islands. 



In the numerous published descriptions of this lovely Fir, another 

 pioneer explorer is always connected with its discovery — to wit, 

 Dr. Thomas Coulter. 



Dr. Coulter arrived in Monterey in November 1831, from tho 

 south, having the previous season explored the Central States of 

 Mexico. 



Douglas gave the doctor a warm welcome to California. " Since I 

 commenced this letter," he writes to Hooker, "Dr. Coulter has 

 arrived. He is a man eminently calculated to work, full of zeal, very 

 amiable, and I hope may do much good to science. I do assure yon 

 from my heart it is a terrible pleasure to me to meet a really good 

 man, and one with whom I can talk on plants." 



They had often met before, and around the fitful camp-fire had 

 passed many a night in botanical converse. Little did the two friends 

 dream then that soon they would be for ever separated, and that 

 inadvertently many of the discoveries of Douglas in the vicinity of 

 Monterey would be credited to Dr. Coulter. Coulter also visited 

 the locality of the new Fir, procured good specimens, which, with 

 other Conifers, he carried home. David Don, describing them in the 

 Linn. Trans. 1837, not only ignored Douglas's name of Finus venusta, 

 published a year previously, but gave the credit of discovery to 

 Dr. Coulter, thus : Pinushracteata, discovered by Dr. Coulter on the 

 Santa Lucia Mountains of California, at an elevation of 6,000 feet," 

 &c. Lambert, in 1842, quoted Don ; and the following botanists, 

 Antoine, Hooker, Endlicher, Walpers, Parlatore, and McNab, all 

 continue the name of hracteata (J. G. Lemmon). 



This is one of the most strikingly beautiful of all the Silver 

 Firs. It is one of those few plants which is happy in an historical 



