VI PREFACE. 
to complete the undertaking. The history and method of the work 
are noted in an introduction by Doctor Rose. 
The next paper (part 4), by Mr. E. O. Wooton, of the United 
States Department of Agriculture, and Mr. Standley, contains 
descriptions of many new plants from the State of New Mexico. 
These have been discovered by the authors while engaged in the 
preparation of a report upon the flora of that State which is designed 
for future publication as a volume of the Contributions from the 
United States National Herbarium.!| That a large number of unde- 
scribed plants have been detected in the progress of the work has 
resulted not only from the neglect of this area by most recent students 
of systematic botany, but also from the fact that there are now 
assembled for the first time fairly complete collections from all parts 
of the State. In addition to the diagnoses of many new species and 
one new genus, the publication of a number of new names is found 
necessary. 
There follow seven short papers (composing part 5), all of them 
systematic studies. The first four of these are by Prof. Charles V. 
Piper, of the Department of Agriculture, one supplementing his 
work on the grasses of the genus Festuca, published in volume 10 of 
the Contributions; a second revising the larkspurs of the group rep- 
resented by Delphinium simplex and describing a new species; a 
third settling the application of the name Heuchera cylindrica of 
Douglas; the fourth presenting miscellancous new or noteworthy 
plants from the Pacific coast and adjusting questions of nomenclature. 
The fifth paper, by Mr. William E. Safford, of the Department of 
Agriculture, describes a new genus of Annonaceae from Colombia, 
with the species upon which it is based. The sixth paper, by Doctor 
Rose and Mr. Standley, is a revision of the section N ephromeria of 
the genus Meibomia, in which nine species, three of them new, are 
described. In the seventh paper Mr. E. S. Steele, of the National 
Herbarium, characterizes four new species of goldenrod from the 
northeastern United States. 
The next paper (part 6), dealing with certain South American 
palms, by Messrs. O. F. Cook and C. B. Doyle, of the Bureau of Plant 
Industry, U. S. Department of Agriculture, is devoted chiefly to 
descriptions of three new genera of the family Iriarteaceae and the 
three new species which serve as generic types. All three genera were 
found in the forests of the Pacific coast of Colombia, near Buenaven- 
tura, in a region that seems not to have been visited by earlier stu- 
dents of this group of plants. The specimens, with notes, measure- 
ments, and photographs, were secured in 1905, when Mr. Doyle 
accompanied Mr. H. Pittier, also of the Bureau of Plant Industry, 
1See volume 19. 
