PREFACE TO THE REVISION. 



THREE motives have dominated the course of this revision ; First, 

 to preserve, so far as possible, the method of the original ; it is still 

 Asa Gray's botany, and the reviser has attempted nothing more 

 than to bring it down to date. Second, it is a companion to the 

 Manual, and, therefore, the nomenclature is made to conform strictly 

 with that volume ; and the authorities have been added for the purpose 

 of identifying the names, and to distinguish them from other systems 

 of nomenclature which are now advocated. Third, it is primarily a 

 school book, and there has been no attempt to include either all the 

 wild or all the cultivated plants of its territory, but rather to consider 

 those species which are most readily accessible for demonstration, 

 and which are most likely to attract the attention of a beginner in 

 botany. If it is said that many conspicuous wild plants are omitted, 

 the reviser will answer that all such plants are described in the 

 Manual, and Chapman's Flora of the Southern States, while there is no 

 other account of our domesticated flora. Therefore, in cases of doubt 

 as to the relative importance, to this volume, of wild and cultivated 

 species, the cultivated rather than the native plants have been inserted. 



A preliminary draft of this revision, through the family Legumi- 

 nosae, was made by Professor Charles R. Barnes, of the University of 

 Wisconsin, of which I have been glad to avail myself. 



L. H. BAILEY. 



CORNELL UNIVERSITY, Ithaca, New York, 

 January, 1895. 



