ber and as to the part they play in the general
wealth and beauty of the forests, are the yellow and sugar pines (Pinus
ponderosa and P. Lambertiana). The yellow pine is most abundant on
the eastern slopes of the Cascades, forming there the main bulk of the
forest in many places. It is also common along the borders of the open
spaces in Willamette Valley. In the southern portion of the State the
sugar pine, which is the king of all the pines and the glory of the
Sierra forests, occurs in considerable abundance in the basins of the
Umpqua and Rogue Rivers, and it was in the Umpqua Hills that this noble
tree was first discovered by the enthusiastic botanical explorer David
Douglas, in the year 1826.

This is the Douglas for whom the noble Douglas spruce is named, and many
a fair blooming plant also, which will serve to keep his memory fresh
and sweet as long as beautiful trees and flowers are loved. The Indians
of the lower Columbia River watched him with lively curiosity as he
wandered about in the woods day after day, gazing intently on the ground
or at the great trees, collecting specimens of everything he saw, but,
unlike all the eager fur-gathering strangers they had hitherto seen,
caring nothing about trade. And when at length they came to know him
better, and saw that from year to year the growing things of the woods
and prairies, meadows and plains, were his only object of pursuit, they
called him the "Man of Grass," a title of which he was proud.

He was a Scotchman and first came to this coast in the spring of 1825
under the auspices of the London Horticultural Society, landing at the
mouth of the Columbia after a long dismal voyage of eight months
and fourteen days. During this first season he chose Fort Vancouver,
belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company, as his headquarters, and from
there made excursions into the glorious wilderness in every direction,
discovering many new species among the trees as well as among the rich
underbrush and smaller herbaceous vegetation. It was while making a
trip to Mount Hood this year that he discovered the two largest and most
beautiful firs in the world (Picea amabilis and P. nobilis--now called
Abies), and from the seeds which he then collected and sent home tall
trees are now growing in Scotland.

In one of his trips that summer, in the lower Willamette Valley, he
saw in an Indian's tobacco pouch some of the seeds and scales of a new
species of pine, which he learned were