﻿PEEFACE. 



Few botanists have more thoroughly investigated the vegetation 

 of their immediate vicinities than did the late Thomas G. Lea that 

 of Cincinnati. This is apparent not so much in the large number 

 of plants here enumerated and determined with singular accu- 

 racy, as in the copious and valuable observations attached to the 

 specimens in his Herbarium. These observations, had life and 

 health been spared to complete them, would have appeared in the 

 form of a local Flora — a work for which years of assiduous study 

 of the plants of South-western Ohio had well fitted him. 



The following Catalogue, however, is all that he left ready for 

 publication — with the request that Mr. J. Carey, of New York, 

 or myself, should see it through the press. In the Phaenogamous 

 portion no changes have been made other than in the nomencla- 

 ture rendered necessary by the advance of the science since the 

 period of his decease- 



During the last three or four years of his life, Mr. Lea was 

 zealously devoted to the study of Fungi: and his collections in 

 that department will be found a highly valuable contribution to 

 the mycology of the United States. 



Mr. Lea died of an autumnal fever, on the 30th of September 

 1844, at Waynesville in this Stale, where he had been passing a 



