PREFACE 



In order that this Report should answer the ends for which 

 the Survey was ordered, the descriptions of the Trees and 

 Shrubs are arranged according to the Natural System. This 

 has been done, not from undervaluing the artificial system of 

 Linnseus, which must still continue of use in aiding to find the 

 name of a plant and its place in the Natural System, but from a 

 conviction of the incomparably greater value of the latter. The 

 artificial system is based essentially on distinctions drawn from 

 the stamens and pistils alone. The Natural System, on the con- 

 trary, takes into consideration not one part only, but every part 

 and whatever relates to it, — the seed, from the development of its 

 embryo to its germination, the growth, formation and arrange- 

 ment of the wood, bark, buds and leaves, and the flower and fruit. 

 It is found that plants which resemble each other in the external 

 forms of 'their more essential parts, have a similar resemblance 

 in properties and uses, and require similar modes of manage- 

 ment and culture. The adoption of the Natural System is, there- 

 fore, particularly important in a comparatively new country like 

 ours. Upon the culture, properties and uses of many of our 

 trees and shrubs, few or no experiments have been made. We 

 must learn what modes of culture are likely to answer best with 

 them, by observing what modes have been successful with well- 

 known plants of the same families and affinities, in the old 

 countries. Of many of them, the value in building, and the 

 various mechanic arts, in dyeing and tanning, and as furnishing 

 articles of food, or materials for medicine, are not yet known. 

 We shall be likely to find them most readily by looking for uses 

 similar to what are known to belong to plants most analogous to 

 them. " If there is," says De Candolle, " a country where the 

 theory of analogy between forms and properties may become 

 eminently useful, it is North America, which, situated in the 

 same latitude as Europe, is occupied bv analogous vegetation " 





