X PREFACE. 



Probably the time is now not far distant when, as the result especially 

 of the labors and investigations of PROF. TUCKERMAN upon our Lichenes. 

 of the REV. DR. CURTIS upon our Fungi, and of PROF. HARVEY upon 

 our Algce, as well as of Messrs. SULLIVANT and LESQUEREUX upon our 

 Mosses, all our Cryptogamia may be in a similar manner presented to the 

 student, in the form of a supplementary volume, separate from that com- 

 prising the Phaenogamous or Flowering Plants. 



I have omitted from this edition the concise Introduction to Botany, and 

 the Glossary, prefixed to the first; supplying their place with a more 

 extended, familiar, and copiously illustrated elementary work, especially 

 intended for beginners (First Lessons in Botany), and which may, when 

 desired, be bound up with the present volume. Or the student may use 

 the author's Botanical Text-Book for the same purpose. In either of these, 

 all the technical terms employed in this volume are explained and illus- 

 trated. Having prepared this Manual for students rather than for learned 

 botanists, I have throughout endeavored to smooth the beginner's way by 

 discarding many an unnecessary technical word or phrase, and by casting 

 the language somewhat in a vernacular mould, perhaps at some sacrifice 

 of brevity, but not, I trust, of the precision for which botanical language is 

 distinguished. 



Botanists may find some reason to complain of the general omission of 

 synonymes ; but it should be considered that all synonymes are useless to 

 the beginner, whose interests I have particularly kept in view, while 

 the greater part are needless to the instructed botanist, who has access to 

 more elaborate works in which they are plentifully given. By discarding 

 them, except in case of some original or recent changes in nomenclature, I 

 have been able to avoid abbreviations (excepting those of author's names, 

 and some few customary ones of States, &c.), to give greater fulness to the 

 characters of the species, and especially of the genera, (a point in which I 

 conceive most works of this class are deficient,) and also to add the deriva- 

 tion of the generic names. 



The Natural Orders are disposed in a series which nearly corresponds, 

 in a general way, with De Candolle's arrangement, beginning with the 

 highest class and ending with the lowest ; and commencing this first and 

 far the largest class (of Dicotyledonous or Exogenous Plants) with those 

 orders in which the flowers are mostly provided with double floral enve- 



Mr. Oakes in the White Mountains, of Fendler in New Mexico, and of Wright in Texas. The 

 title of the work is " Musci Boreali- American!, sire Specimina Exsiccata Muscorum in Ameri- 

 cse Rebuspublicis Foederatis detectorum, conjunctis studiis W. S. SULLIVANT et L. LESQUEREUX, 

 1856." Mr. Sullivant's connection with the work extends no further than to a joint and equal 

 responsibility in the determination of the species. This most extensive and valuable collec- 

 tion ever made of American Mosses, which has cost much labor and expense, and comprises 

 nearly 400 species and marked varieties, is published at 8 20 for each set, and will doubtless 

 be eagerly sought after by Bryological students. 



