INTRODUCTION. library 



NEW YORK 

 BOTANICAL 

 GARDEN. 



The intention of the present work is to enable the lover of botany to determine 

 the names of any wUd plants he may meet with, when journeying in the British 

 Islands, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. I have chosen these limits, 

 as those of the countries most frequented by English tom*ists, and with the botany 

 of which I was in some degree personally acquainted. To have extended them 

 further, would have made my book more bulky, and, I am afraid, more imperfect. 

 To accomplish this object, I had to keep in view two important particulars, — to 

 make the descriptions clear and distinctive, and at the same time to condense 

 the whole as much as possible, so that the work might be comprised in a single 

 volume, of a bulk not inconvenient for the use of the traveller. The former object 

 I have used no small pains to attain ; in the first place by taking care, if by any 

 means I could accomplish it, that my characters should always contain a difference 

 at least sufficient to discriminate the plant from all others contained in this work. 

 To this end I have been in the habit, in aU the larger genera, of forming for 

 myself an analysis of the genus ; taking successively the most important cha- 

 racters, and dividing and subdividing upon them, till I arrived at the species. 

 Where I could not succeed in this, I have taken each species in order, and com- 

 pared it with those that follow ; desirous that some character, good or bad, 

 should serve to mark some sort of distinction. I have not found this always 

 practicable, even in species derived from the same author ; much less in those 

 only noticed by different authors. In such cases, I have contented myself with 

 translating the words of my author, and giving them as a quotation, with the 

 writer's name at the end. Where the inverted - commas therefore occur, they 

 show, either that the description does not appear to point out any satisfactory 

 distinction, or that there are parts of it which I do not fuUy understand, or that 

 I do not feel confident that the plant does not occur under another name in 

 other authors, or, lastly, that I doubt whether the plant be the one described 

 •t)y other authors under the same name. My reader cannot obtain from me 

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