Ir is now more than forty years since the publication of Mr. 
Olney’s Catalogue of Rhode Island Plants,* which was the first 
enumeration, other than the partial lists occasionally made by 
visiting botanists, ever made of our plants. Since that time, and 
more especially during the last decade, the study of Botany has 
received increased attention, and is regularly taught in the 
schools, generally, however, in a merely perfunctory and necessa- 
rily superficial manner, but any attention given to the study is 
an advance upon the previous total neglect of the science. The 
Franklin Society has continued its discussions and lectures upon 
botanical subjects, and an interest has been maintained and fos- 
tered, which, it is pleasant to note, is more general at the present 
than at any previous time; withal, Mr. Olney’s generous bequest 
to Brown University, and the endowment of a professorship of 
Botany under his will, has made the possibility of gaining a 
knowledge of botanical science so comparatively easy, that it is 
but reasonable to expect that this branch of Biology is to receive, 
at least in part, that attention which it deserves. 
When the first enumeration was made, many problems remained 
unsolved which are to-day of easy explanation; text books to 
which recourse might be had for careful generalizations from 
* The first part of this Catalogue was the conjoined work of the Committee of 
the Providence Franklin Society, Stephen T. Olney, George Hunt, George Thur- 
ber and Henry B. Metcalf; the supplementary additions were made by Mr. 
Olney. 
