PREFACE. 



The writer began his botanical studies in Chester County, 

 Pennsylvania, under the guidance of the classic Flora Cestrica 

 of Dr. Darlington, and was fairly familiar with the plant life of 

 this portion of the Piedmont country before he ever visited the 

 Coastal Plain to the eastward. The first trip to the Pine Bar- 

 rens, at Egg Harbor City, July 21, 1889, he will probably 

 never forget. It was one of those delightful little excursions 

 of botanists which, once a week, left Philadelphia for a day's 

 tramp, under the leadership of the late Dr. J. Bernard Brinton. 

 Nearly everything was new, and the contrast between the flow- 

 ers of this wonderful Pine country and the moire prosaic flora of 

 Pennsylvania's agricultural district made an impression and 

 started an inquiry that were largely responsible for the produc- 

 tion of the present volume. 



Other work, however, interfered for some years with the 

 prosecution of botanical studies of any sort, and it remained for 

 a joint meeting of the Philadelphia and Torrey Botanical Clubs, 

 at Toms River, July 4th, 1900, to provide the stimulus which 

 led to definite plans for a Flora of the Pine Barrens. The interim 

 had witnessed a wonderful change in the status of American 

 botany. The Illustrated Flora had appeared, and under its stim- 

 ulus botanists were even daring tO' find new species right at 

 home and to describe them as new, without regard to what 

 Gray's Manual might have tO' say on the subject. The old solid 

 board field-presses, covered with oilcloth and provided with 

 carpet-bag handles, which had superseded the historic vasculum 

 at the time of the Egg Harbor trip, had been supplanted by 

 light slat presses, and, instead of carrying into the field twenty- 

 five felt dryers and a like number of folders and exhausting 

 one's gray matter in deciding- just which twenty-five plants we 

 should select for specimens, we now carried afield only folders 



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