CATALOGUE OF PLANTS. 29 
and varieties especially characteristic of the sea beaches and salt or 
brackish marshes and meadows. Some of these are plainly forms of 
upland origin, which have accommodated themselves to their saline 
surroundings, and been thereby slightly changed in structure and 
appearance, so as now to be evidently distinct from their inland 
neighbors and relatives, while others appear to be very distinct from 
any other living forms. The coast of the State is about 350 miles in 
length from Jersey City around to the‘head of Delaware Bay, and 
the salt marshes overspread 463 square miles. This division of the 
flora is very uniform in character from one end of the coast line to 
the other, and is the most distinct and differentiated of all. 
We may also make out a fourth group of species of especial west- 
ern distribution, there being a few plants mainly confined to the 
Delaware River valley, and reaching their greatest development in 
point of abundance to the west. These species have no special 
significance in the consideration of the origin of our flora, and might, 
perhaps, all be‘included in one or the other of the two divisions first 
considered. The detailed statement of the members of each natural 
order of the flowering plants and fern cohort, and their distribution, 
which will be found at the end of this catalogue, shows the actual 
distribution as far as it has been possible to obtain it. The introduced 
plants—those native of other countries and of portions of the United 
States beyond our limits—which have established themselves with us 
and become naturalized, and those of the same origin which occasion- 
ally or frequently appear in the wild state, as escapes from cultivation 
or in other ways, and which we may designate as adventive or fugitive, 
are given in separate columns, as are those found all over the State, 
the number of native species in each order, and the total number of 
each enumerated. The species collected only on the ballast grounds 
of the great cities are enumerated separately. . 
I have been fortunate in securing the cordial co-operation of 
students ‘of all kinds of plants, and the results of their investigations 
have caused the present work to become the most complete enumera- 
tion of plants of any region of as great area in the world. In fact, 
no such systematic study of a flora has hitherto been attempted. 
It has proved, however, impossible, at the present time, to work out 
the geographical distribution of the lower plants. Most of them are 
doubtless very widely distributed. 
