in PREFACE. 



and who gives to a work great enough to command a life, the 

 scanty hours of recreation of his summer holidays. 



A Report upon the Botany of the State is certainly very 

 incomplete, without even an enumeration of the Algse, the 

 Mosses, the Lichens, and the Fungi ; and, with a hope to pre- 

 vent this omission, I furnished myself, at the commencement of 

 this Survey, with several somewhat expensive works upon these 

 departments of botany. But I am obliged to confess, that I have 

 been able to do very little in regard to them. Since the com- 

 mencement of this Survey, my friend, Rev. J. L. Russell, of 

 Hingham, has carefully prepared a catalogue of the mosses in 

 the eastern part of the State, which he was kind enough to 

 place at my disposal. I was not willing that its publication 

 should be delayed till the appearance of this volume, and it has 

 been published in the Boston Journal of Natural History. Mr. 

 lid ward Tuckerman also prepared, at my request, a catalogue 

 of the lichens found on the bark of trees in this State. As 

 it is to be hoped that he will soon give us a complete account of 

 the lichens of New England, for which work he is amply pre- 

 pared, it would be doing him injustice to publish an imperfect 

 catalogue. The deficiency in the history of the Algse is likely 

 to be soon supplied, by Prof. Bailey, of West Point, in the 

 thorough manner of which he has given evidence in the Scien- 

 tific Journal. 



In writing my descriptions, I have, as far as possible, avoided 

 the use of technical language. To avoid it entirely is im- 

 possible. When a part, an organ, a form, or a modification 

 of form is spoken of which has no English name, it must 

 cither be called by its scientific name, or it must be described 

 by a tedious circumlocution, repeated as often as the thing is 

 spoken of, and, after all, scarcely more intelligible even to the 

 unlearned reader than the scientific word, which expresses pre- 

 cisely the thing meant and nothing else. 



In the preparation of the Report, I have availed myself of 

 whatever I found most to my purpose, but never, intention- 

 ally, without giving credit, except in the cases mentioned 

 aliovc. The numerous facts obtained from Loudon and Mi- 

 chauXj are usually given in their words. -Some of the best 



