INTRODUCTION. 
aim is to illustrate and describe every species, from the Ferns upward, recognized as 
distinct by botanists and growing wild within the area adopted, and to complete the 
work within such moderate limits of size and cost as shall make it accessible to the public 
generally, so that it may serve as an independent handbook of our Northern Flora and as a 
work of general reference, or as an adjunct and supplement to the manuals of systematic 
botany in current use. 
To all botanical students, a complete illustrated manual is of the greatest service; always 
useful, often indispensable. The doubts and difficulties that are apt to attend the best writ- 
ten descriptions will often be instantly solved by figures addressed to the eye. The greatest 
stimulus, moreover, to observation and study, is a clear and intelligible guide; and among 
the aids to botanical enquiry, a complete illustrated handbook is one of the chief. Thou- 
sands of the lovers of plants, on the other hand, who are not botanists and are not familiar 
with botanical terms or the methods of botanical analysis, will find in the illustrations of a 
complete work the readiest means of comparison and identification of the plants that grow 
around them; and through the accompanying descriptions they will at the same time acquire 
a familiarity with botanical language. By these facilities, not only will the study of our na- 
tive plants be stimulated and widened among all classes, but the enjoyment, the knowledge 
and the scientific progress derivable from these studies will be proportionately increased. 
Though most European countries have complete illustrations of the flora of their own 
territory, no similar work has hitherto been attempted here. Our illustrated works, some of 
them of great value, have been either sumptuous and costly monographs, accessible to com- 
paratively few, or confined to special groups of plants, or haye been works of a minor and 
miscellaneous character, embracing at most but a few hundred selected species, and from in- 
completeness, therefore, unsuited for general reference. Scarcely one-quarter of the species 
illustrated in the present work have ever been figured before. That no such general work 
has been previously attempted is to be ascribed partly, perhaps, to the imperfect exploration 
of our territory, and the insufficiency of the collections to enable such a work to be made 
approximately complete; partly to the great number of species required to be figured and 
the consequent difficulty and cost of the undertaking, and partly to the lack of any apparent 
demand for such a work sufficient to warrant the expense of the enterprise. 
The increased accumulations of material in our largest herbaria, the result of multiplied 
explorations, and the widely extended interest in the study of our native plants, seem now 
to justify the endeavor to supply a complete illustrated work adapted to general use. 
The enterprise, projected by Judge Brown, and maintained and supervised by him 
throughout, has been diligently prosecuted for the past six years. Its execution has been 
mainly the work of Dr. Britton. The text, founded upon a careful examination of living or 
herbarium specimens, has been chiefly prepared by him, with the assistance, however, of 
specialists in a few groups who have contributed the descriptions for certain families as 
stated in the footnotes. The figures also have been drawn by artists under his immediate 
supervision; except those of most of the grasses, drawn by Mr. Holm, under the eye of Prof. 
Scribner; while the work in all its parts has been carefully revised by both authors. The 
keys to the genera and species, based upon a few distinctive characters, will, it is believed, 
greatly facilitate the determinations. 
In preparing a new work of this character, the authors have felt that there should be no 
hesitation in adopting the matured results of the botanical studies of the last half century 
here and in Europe, so as to bring the work fully abreast of the knowledge and scientific 
conceptions of the time, and make it answer present needs. Although this involves changes 
in systematic order, in nomenclature, and in the division of families and genera, such as may 
(5) 
(4 \HE present work is the first complete Illustrated Flora published in this country. Its 
