UNITED STATES. 189 
claimed by other objects than those of Nature alone ; and without 
being a whit the less inclined to pay her especial homage, he is 
sensible of what is due to other branches of information, of which 
he would be ashamed to return home altogether ignorant. Had . 
health or leisure permitted of my collecting all, or most of the 
species, within my reach, I must still have omitted mentioning 
numbers with which I was either in part or wholly unacquainted, 
preferring to pass over such in silence, to giving erroneous names 
to some, and subjoining a mark of doubt to others. The books I 
had at hand on the journey were necessarily few, and the deter- 
mination of the species on the spot, in most cases, impracticable. 
It was only when enjoying the advantage of an American 
botanical friend for a companion, on my herborizing excursions, 
that I could confidently trust myself to record, by name, the 
many new or doubtfully recognised acquaintances that presented 
themselves to my notice at every step. 
Seeing, therefore, the impossibility of giving undivided atten- 
tion to the botany of the United States, without sacrificing other 
matters of general interest, I resolved to confine my observations 
principally to the range of the species, and more particularly of 
the trees and shrubs ; interspersing occasional remarks on their size, 
place, and growth, uses, and so forth, together with others on the 
Flora hospita of these countries, the plants cultivated or intro- 
duced, for ornament or utility, into gardens or pleasure-grounds. : 
Leaving Liverpool very late on the evening of the 7th of July, 
in the noble but adverse-fated steam-ship Great Britain, we reached _ E 
New York at a very early hour on the morning of the 21st, not- 
withstanding that our progress was twice suspended by the giving- 
way of one of the driving-chains of the screw propeller,obliging usto E. 
lie-to for some few hours each time to rivet on new links; besides 
having been forced to stop, occasionally, for a shorter time, to 
tighten the chains, which were found to become slack under the 
great and constant strain to which they were subjected. This 
detention, probably, saved us from a disastrous termination to our 
voyage; for shortly after mid-day of the 16th, upon the sudden - 
clearing away of a thick fog, which had precluded any observa- — 
