EARLIER BOTANICAL EXPLORATIONS. 13 
of life from the lowest to the highest forms, the truly natural order, 
and at the present time generally accepted as such by biologists. The 
study of plants is now coming to be generally conducted in accordance 
with these views, and the natural system of the vegetable kingdom, as 
enunciated in the classical work cited, has already been adopted in the 
most important works on descriptive botany in this country which 
have lately made their appearance, and will without doubt be followed 
in similar publications during another generation. 
NOMENCLATURE. 
In nomenclature the principle of priority, regarded as the funda- 
mental one, is strictly adhered to in the present work. This was first 
advocated by De Candolle at the International Botanical Congress at 
Paris in 1867, and its application was developed by American botanists 
at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science at Rochester, in 1892, and through the rules reported by the 
committee on nomenclature which were adopted at the next meeting 
of the botanical club of the association held at Madison, Wis., in 
August, 1893. 
The applications of plants to the use of man are briefly alluded to 
under the abbreviated head of Economic, and a list of the cultivated 
plants of the State is given at the close of the volume. The fuller 
treatment of the relations of the plant life of Alabama to the necessi- 
ties or comfort of mankind was at first contemplated as a part of this 
volume, but, on account of the expansion of the other matter, has had 
to be deferred. 
HISTORY OF THE EARLIER BOTANICAL EXPLORATIONS OF 
ALABAMA. 
In regard to its vegetable productions Alabama, like the rest of the 
territory fronting the Gulf of Mexico east of the Mississippi, remained 
until the last quarter of the eighteenth century a terra incognita. 
WILLIAM BARTRAM. 
The first description of these productions is given by William 
Bartram,' in his account of his memorable travels through the South- 
ern States, in the years 1773 to 1778. This intrepid explorer of the 
botany of Southeastern North America entered the State to all 
appearance somewhere near the middle of its eastern border, at the old 
Muscogee town Uche (the site of which can at present not be exactly 
located), after a journey of three days reaching the Indian settlements at 
Tallassee on the Tallapoosa River. In his account of his travels from 
the Tallapoosa Valley to the coast Bartram depicts most graphically the 
1 Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, east and west F orida, ete. 
Philadelphia, 1791. 
