AMERICA! JOURIAL OF SCIENCE. 



[THIRD SERIES.] 



ART. XXXIV.— R n America; 



by Asa Gray. 



vancement of Science, at Montreal, August 25, 1882.] 



In the remarks which I have to offer to this Section, you 

 w 'ji understand the word Fhr<i to be written with a capital 

 initial. I am to speak of the attempts made in my own day, 

 and still making, to provide our botanists with a compendious 

 systematic account of the phasnogamous vegetation of the whole 

 country which the Amerii Ha its own. 



I shall make no effort to avoid the personal turn which my 

 narrative is likely to take. In fact, it will be seen that 1 have 

 partly a personal object in drawing up this statement. 



' >nly two Floras of North America have ever been published 

 as completed works, that of Miehaux and that of Pursh. A 

 i!|]r I was begun (by Dr. Torrey, assisted by a young man who 

 is no longer young), by the publication in the summer of 1838 

 of a first fasciculus; the first volume of 700 pages was issued 

 two years afterward; and 500 pages of the second volume 

 appeared in 1841 and in the early part of 1843. The time for 

 continuing it in the original form has long ago passed by. Its 

 completion in the form in which I have undertaken it anew, is 

 precarious. Precarious in the original sense of the word, for it 

 Am. Jour. Sci.— Third SERiEa, Vol. XXIV, No. 143. -November, 1882. 



