* PREFACE, 
to the practical botanist) was of the greatest ime 
portance to me. | 
| -Soon after my return from the hind] jour- 
ney, I had the pleasure to form an acquaintance with 
Meriwether Lewis, Esq., then Governor of Upper Loui= 
siana, who had lately returned from an expedition across 
the Continent of America to the Pacific Ocean, by the 
way of the Missouri and the great Columbia rivers, ex- 
ecuted under the direction of the Government of the 
United States. A small but highly interesting collec- 
tion of dried plants was put into my hands by this 
| meinen n in order to — and figure rm I 
account of his s Travels, artie: dicar: dites ciae 
in preparing for the press. This valuable work, by the 
unfortunate and untimely end of its author, has been in- 
terrupted in its publication ; and ihah General Da- 
niel Clark, the companion of Mr. Lewis, (to whom I 
transmitted all the drawings prepared for the work,) un- 
dertook the editorship after his death, it has. not, to my 
. knowledge, yet appeared before the publie, notwith- 
standing the great forwardness the journals and mate- 
rials’ were. in when: xs "t the Be enean tial 
them. 
The 'talldeton: bot ind jetipsher iad 
during the rapid return of the expedition from the Pa-- 
- cific Ocean towards the United States. A much more 
extensive one, made on their slow ascent towards the 
Rocky mountains and the chains of the Northern An ` 
des, had unfortunately been lost, by being deposited’ 
among other things at the foot of those mountains.» The 
loss of this first collection is the more to be regretted, 
