portunity of sending them. The printing and all the workmanship is done by the islanders themselves. I arrived here on the 3d of June, in eight months from|London; the passage was very pleasant, as a fine, gentlemanly person. Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, was Captain. The lateness of my arrival, for it was the first of July before I could leave the coast for the Interior, has been a very serious drawback; the season proving unusually early, all the vernal plants, which are by far the most numerous, beautiful, and curious here, were withered and decayed. It took me twenty-four days of hard labour to reach a very lofty chain of mountains on which I was in July 1826; I again found my Poenia (P. Brownii, Dougl. in Hook. Fl. Bor. Am., v. I, p. 27), and including all my labours, there are, I should think, fully one hundred new species, and perhaps some new genera, though I have yet only determined one, which is akin to Œnothera.
I have now just saved the sailing of the ship, and, after sixty days of severe fatigue, have undergone as I can assure you, one of still more trying labour, in packing up three chests of seeds, and writing to Mr. Sabine and his brother. The Captain only waits for this letter, after which the ship bears away for Old England. I am truly sorry to, see her go without my dried plants, but this is unavoidable, as I have not a bit of well-seasoned wood in which to place them, and should, moreover, be unwilling to risk the whole collection in one vessel; and the sails are already unfurled, so that it would be impossible to attempt dividing them. I, however, transmit one bundle of six species, exceedingly beautiful, of the genus Pinus. Among these, P. nobilis is by far the finest. I spent three weeks in a forest composed of this tree, and day by day could not cease to admire it; in fact, my words can be only monotonous expressions of this feeling. I have added one new species during this journey, P. grandis, a noble tree, akin to P. balsamea, growing from one hundred and seventy to two hundred feet in height. In the collection of seeds, I have sent an amazing quantity of all the kinds. Your specimens are in every way perfect. I have a few Mosses and a considerable number of Fuel: this is a department in which I fear the Flora will be deficient; but as I am to spend this winter entirely on the coast, you may expect to receive all that are found within the parallels of the British possessions on the Pacific side of this Continent. I have already preserved some beautiful specimens of this tribe for the use of your lectures, the principal of which is Fucus Lutkeanus[1] of Mertens, the one which you may remember my endeavouring to describe to Mr. Dawson Turner (the author of the Historia Fucorum).
On the direction of my next year's route, I am not yet decided; but my desire is to prosecute my journey in north California, in the
- ↑ For a most interesting account of which see v. III, p. 5 of the Botanical Miscellany.
