1 6 INTRODUCTION 



Elliott's Sketch of the Botany of South Carolina 

 and Georgia, 1816; Dr. W. P. C. Barton's Phila- 

 delphia Flora, 1 81 8; and Dr. John Torrey's 

 Catalogue of Plants growing within Thirty Miles 

 of the City of New York, 1819, a collaborated 

 work. The year before had seen the birth of 

 Thomas Nuttall's Genera of North American 

 Plants, an epoch-making volume. 



Dr. W. P. C. Barton, again, in the same year, 

 feeds the botanical flame with a Flora of North 

 America including original painted drawings. 

 " This," says Darlington, " though entirely with- 

 out method, was tolerably well executed and ex- 

 tended to three volumes quarto, when it was dis- 

 continued." Torrey, also, in 1824, left a useful 

 paper partly incomplete — his Flora of the North- 

 ern and Middle Sections of the United States — 

 but that on The Rocky Mountain Plants, 1826, 

 the first American specimen of a regular Flora 

 arranged according to the Natural System, 

 was " indeed an admirable performance." The 

 modest bibliographer, William Darlington, then 

 adds, without a comment, his own Florula Ces- 

 trica, 1826, and goes on to speak of some articles 

 in the tenth volume of the American Journal 

 of Science by Dr. Lewis C. Beck, Contributions 

 toward the Botany of the States of Illinois and 

 Missouri, 1826, then breaks into warm praise 

 of Sir William Hooker's Flora Boreali-Ameri- 

 cana, 1829- 1840, with its 238 quarto plates. 



