diately took up the difficult task of learning to set type, and, despite all impediments, succeeded so well that in due time he was enabled to set his own manuscript, form after form, until each fascicle was completed, the press work being done in Portland. . . . The first fascicle was issued March 15, 1897, and now, after a period of seven years of unceasing labor and the expenditure of every dollar he could gather during that time, the seventh and last fascicle is finished, the whole forming a handsome octavo volume of 792 pages of text and 24 pages of index.
His collection of plants was given to the herbarium of the University of Oregon, and recognition of the gift is made in each annual catalogue of that institution. Beyond that there is little record of him in the history and memorials of Oregon in a way to keep before the public the inspiration of his spirit, the example of his selfless motivation. Professor A. R. Sweetser is writing a history of the early botanists of the Pacific Northwest, and it is hoped a full account of Thomas Howell in that book will make some amends for a long neglect.
He died in Portland on December 3, 1912, at the age of 62, and was buried in the family lot in Vancouver, Washington. "Simple in manner, unaffected in speech, of few wants, but of great capacity for fortitude, he asked little of the world."
John Reed's outlook was upon far broader horizons than Thomas Howell's. The latter by intensive observation of plant life in three western states became known to scientists all over the world. The former by a vision that, barrage-like, leaped across the foreground to far distant points, became a hero to millions who spoke a strange tongue. Thomas Howell saw
