30 ECONOMIC BOTANY OF ALABAMA 



North, the northern names are apt to be given preference. A 

 striking case of this is one of our shrubs, Ilex glabra. It occurs 

 s])aringly near the coast from Nova Scotia to New Jersey, and 

 abundantly from \'irginia to Louisiana. It seems to be called "ink- 

 berry"" in the North, but invariably "gallberry" in the South ; and 

 only the northern name a]:)pears in such works as Small "s Flora and 

 the catalogue part of Mohr's Plant Life of Alabama (which was 

 edited in \\'ashington). Thus a name which is used perhaps by a 

 few thousand people is given preference to one used by millions. 

 In the present work every effort is made to distinguish l)etween 

 the bona-fide local names and the exotic or fictitious ones, and to 

 avoid foisting any of the latter on unsuspecting readers ; but it can- 

 not be claimed that perfection has been attained in this respect. 



After the name of a species follows a brief sketch of some of 

 its salient features, such as size and time of flowering, but no at- 

 tempt is made to describe any species fully for purposes of identi- 

 fication, for most of our trees at least are already pretty well 

 known to the people wdio live among them, and descriptions of the 

 less familiar ones can be found in well known botanical works, 

 such as the southern floras of Chapman and Small. It is the func- 

 tion of a state survey to indicate the location and approximate 

 quantity of minerals, water-powers, soils, timber, and other natural 

 resources, but not to compete with the publishers of text-books by 

 telling how to mine coal, make iron, build dams, cultivate different 

 types of soil, or identify minerals, fossils, j^lants, etc. And indeed 

 to make this catalogue serve as a manual of identification for the 

 use of persons wholly ignorant of botany a glossary of botanical 

 terms would have to be added, as well as keys to the families, 

 genera and species; and that would be too much to e.xpect in a 

 work of this kind. 



Photographic illustrations of some of the species are i)ro- 

 vided. and these may be of some assistance in identification. Un- 

 fortunately only a few of the species can be thus illustrated, for 

 most trees grow naturally only in rather dense forests, so that we 

 cannot do much more than photograph the trunk. Occasionally 

 such a tree can be found in an old field or on the edge of a 

 clearing, but in the former case it does not have its normal shape, 

 and- in the latter it may not stand out sufficiently from its neigh- 

 bors. And sometimes an ojjportunity to photograph a fine speci- 



