Statistics of the Flora of the Northern States. 399 
York, Ohio, Wisconsin, &c., in high sphagnons bogs which have 
not the least trace of saltness. 
nly one of our maritime plants is a true shrub, viz. Baccharis 
halimafolia. Iva frutescens is more or less woody; and Hudsonia 
fomentosa is a heath-like under-shrub: the rest are herbs. 
On the whole, I should say that the range of our maritime 
Plants through degrees of latitude is not sensibly greater than 
t of our herbaceous species generally. 
The Prominent Characteristics of the Flora of the Northern 
United States. 
_ To answer the question as to what are the leading character- 
istics of the vegetation of the Northern United States, taken as 
awhole, we should have to consider, first: What are the more 
remarkable peculiarities of our flora, as discovered by the in- 
structed botanist with the whole field systematically displayed 
to his mental view; and secondly, what are the plants or the 
forms of vegetation which, by their abundance or their promi- 
hence, impart to our flora its dominant features. The first is a 
matter of deduction from a variety of facts, many of which 
Would never arrest the attention of the casual observer: the 
depend upon the point of view. To the traveller from our 
Southern States, or from the great plains of the West, the novel 
otanist naturally, if not inevitably, takes that of Europe as his 
ard of comparison. : 
| In comparing, as the botanist naturally would, our flora with 
at of Northern and Western Europe, the following would ap- 
Pear to be leading characteristices. _ : cigs es 
ek, Our comparative richness in ordinal types ;—our flora hay- 
ing, as already remarked (vol. xxii, p. 216), 26 orders which are 
absent from that of Europe, while the latter (exclusive of the 
Mediterranean basin) has only seven orders which are wanting 
2. The btropical character of our extra-Euro; 
orders ott eo ed an cee referred to, and wwhish/Wall be 
Manifest to the botanist sa ae list of such orders given 
ma former article (vol. xxi, p. 5 - 
3. Our aa e species a gg A sae and especially of 
trees; as already alluded to'(p. 84). will strikingly appear 
