[Vor. 3 
348 ANNALS OF THE MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN 
starved out, fall a prey to enemies of the animal or plant 
world, to adverse weather conditions, or to other causes. 
Those that survive do so, often, by waging a fierce and 
suecessful battle with other species for the occupation of 
available ground. In this struggle, which has been going 
on for countless ages under changing conditions, forms 
have constantly been modified and those that could not adapt 
themselves to new environments have been exterminated and 
replaced by hardier and more fit races. 
Deep buried in the shales of our coal measures are impres- 
sions of plants (principally ferns and other cryptogams) that 
flourished in the tropical marshes of a far-off period. 
Since then countless races of plants have come and gone, 
many of them leaving no trace, but under rare, favorable 
conditions fragments of some of them have been preserved; 
so that the paleobotanist, digging in the clays and shales 
of past geological ages, catches here and there a glimpse 
of those vanished floras, just as the archaeologist delves in 
the ashes of a ruined city or in the depths of some grass- 
grown mound in an effort to reconstruct at least an outline 
of the history of the past. 
The layman, while recognizing the utility of forestry or 
the collection and study of plants of cultural, medicinal, or 
other economie value, is often puzzled to understand the 
object of purely scientific botany. To the scientist, however, 
regarding each plant as a wonderful living organism, marvel- 
ously adapted to its environment, with specific functions to 
perform, definite relationships with other species, and a 
history extending back into the remote past, even the com- 
monest weed is an object of interest and worthy of study. 
And it is only by their systematic and critical study that 
a comprehensive knowledge of Nature's methods and the 
laws of life may be gained. 
It is important, therefore, that the plants of all parts 
of the world should be collected, studied, and preserved; 
and I trust that the following catalogue and the collections 
upon which it 1s based, although dealing only with the plants 
