LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL. 



To His Excellency, Hon. Henry D. Hatfield, Governor of West 

 Virginia, and President of the West Virginia Geological Sur- 

 vey Commission : 



SIR : I have the honor to transmit herewith the very inter- 

 esting work of Dr. C. F. Millspaugh, Curator of Botany in the 

 Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, 111., on the Living 

 Flora of West Virginia, and also the very complete work of Dr. 

 David White, Associate Curator of Paleobotany in the Smithson- 

 ian Institution, and Chief Geologist U. S. G. Survey. Washing- 

 ton, D. C., on the Fossil Flora of West Virginia. 



The very exhaustive paper of Dr. Millspaugh which forms 

 Part I. of this new Volume V(A) of the publications of the West 

 Virginia Geological Survey, constitutes an entire revision of the 

 "West Virginia Flora" prepared and published by Dr. Millspaugh 

 in 1896, as a revision of his first publication of a ''Preliminary 

 Catalogue of the Flora of West Virginia," 1891, published by the 

 West Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station when Dr. Mills- 

 paugh was connected with that Institution as Botanist during the 

 years 1889 to 1892. The present paper embodies the results of 

 a much wider and later study not only by Dr. Millspaugh through 

 the works and collections of other authors, but also the results 

 of Dr. John L. Sheldon's (Professor of Botany, W. Va. Uni- 

 versity) r*ecent studies communicated freely to Dr. Millspaugh 

 for use in this publication, so that a very large addition to the 

 West Virginia Flora is thus made known to the world by this 

 "labor of love" on the part of Dr. Millspaugh, for which afll 

 those interested in the botany of the State will be deeply grate- 

 ful. 



Dr. David White's paper on the Fossil Flora of West Vir- 

 ginia which constitutes Part II. of this volume is the first publi- 

 cation of its kind made by the State giving a complete list of the 

 known fossil plants, or the Flora that covered the land and peat 

 swamps of West Virginia millions of years ago when the vege- 

 table deposits which now form our coal beds were in process of 



