CATALOGUE OF PLANTS. 29 



and varieties especially characteristic of the sea beaches and salt or 

 brackish marshes and meadows. Some of these are plainly forms of 

 upland origin, which have accommodated themselves to their saline 

 surroundings, and been thereby slightly changed in structure and 

 appearance, so as now to be evidently distinct from their inland 

 neighbors and relatives, while others appear to be very distinct from 

 any other living forms. The coast of the State is about 350 miles in 

 length from Jersey City around to the head of Delaware Bay, and 

 the salt marshes overspread 463 square miles. This division of the 

 flora is very uniform in character from one end of the coast line to 

 the other, and is the most distinct and differentiated of all. 



We may also make out a fourth group of species of especial west- 

 ern distribution, there being a few plants mainly confined to the 

 Delaware River valley, and reaching their greatest development in 

 point of abundance to the west. These species have no special 

 significance in the consideration of the origin of our flora, and might, 

 perhaps, all be included in one or the other of the two divisions first 

 considered. The detailed statement of the members of each natural 

 order of the flowering plants and fern cohort, and their distribution, 

 which will be found at the end of this catalogue, shows the actual 

 distribution as far as it has been possible to obtain it. The introduced 

 plants those native of other countries and of portions of the United 

 States beyond our limits which have established themselves with us 

 and become naturalized, and those of the same origin which occasion- 

 ally or frequently appear in the wild state, as escapes from cultivation 

 or in other ways, and which we may designate as adventive or fugitive, 

 are given in separate columns, as are those found all over the State, 

 the number of native species in each order, and the total number of 

 each enumerated. The species collected only on the ballast grounds 

 of the great cities are enumerated separately. 



I have been fortunate in securing the cordial co-operation of 

 students of all kinds of plants, and the results of their investigations 

 have caused the present work to become the most complete enumera- 

 tion of plants of any region of as great area in the world. In fact, 

 no such systematic study of a flora has hitherto been attempted. 

 It has proved, however, impossible, at the present time, to work out 

 the geographical distribution of the lower plants. Most of them are 

 doubtless very widely distributed. 



