NOTES AND COMMENT 273 



Illustrations of North American Vegetation. The printed volume and 

 the single set of twelve volumes with two supplementary volumes on 

 Foreign Vegetation and Historic Trees, represent one work, the out- 

 come of a conception of what ought to constitute a permanent record of 

 the vegetation of North America, as it existed before the original vege- 

 tation had disappeared or been altered irreparable by the destructive 

 agents of man. 



The method adopted in mounting the illustrations is described here- 

 with. The illustrations brought together in the fourteen volumes have 

 been mounted on high grade manila paper (9| x llf in.) in order to 

 conform with the size of the plates in Karsten and Schenck's Die Vegeta- 

 tionsbilder. Bound in light olive green buckram the volumes, it is 

 hoped, will not be subject to rapid deterioration. Thus in a modest 

 way, without undue expense, has been accomplished for North Ameri- 

 can vegetation what Mr. Edward S. Curtis has done in the publication of 

 his magnificent and sumptuous folios of Indian life in twenty volumes, 

 issued at a cost of $500,000 under the patronage of Mr. J. Pierpont Mor- 

 gan. Considering the smaller size of many of the photographs in the 

 vegetation collection, it is estimated that there are many times more 

 than the total number in the Curtis collection of Indian pictures. 



Some of the photographs included in the volumes of Illustrations of 

 North American Vegetation were taken by the author himself, others 

 were obtained by purchase and exchange, but the major part of the 

 illustrations were obtained from illustrated pamphlets issued by rail- 

 road, steamship, hotel and land improvement companies, that have 

 spared no trouble and have gone to great expense to represent pictorially 

 and descriptively the scenic features upon which part of their business 

 depends. Illustrated post cards of real phytogeographic value have 

 been incorporated. Several of the monthly and weekly magazines, 

 such as Recreation, Travel, Outing, Country Life in America, Sunset, 

 National Geographic Magazine, Pacific Monthly, etc., have furnished 

 many valuable pictures, as also the Philadelphia Commercial Museum, 

 which has an extensive series of photographs of the Spanish American 

 countries and other commercial countries of the world. Government 

 publications have yielded a rich harvest of illustrations, originally made 

 at great expense by the various scientific bureaus at Washington. The 

 following have been most prolific sources of illustrative material: the 

 bulletins and reports of the Geological Survey, the Bureau of Plant 

 Industry, the National Herbarium, the Forest Service, and the Biological 

 Survey. Through the courtesy of the secretary of the Pennsylvania 



